This document provides historical context for reading Freud and analyzes his cognitive style and methods. It discusses Freud's two images of man - a humanistic view that saw people as striving for fulfillment, and a mechanistic view that saw unconscious drives as the primary motivators. It also examines Freud's intellectual character, including his use of self-critical doubt, analysis over synthesis, and tolerance for contradiction. The document aims to help readers understand Freud beyond finding faults and instead learn from his work.

2. On Reading Freud
By
Robert
R.
Holt,
Ph.D.

3. Copyright
©
1973
by
Robert
R.
Holt
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4. Contents
Acknowledgments
...........................................................................................................
6
Introduction
....................................................................................................................
7
Historical
Background
for
a
Reading
of
Freud
.................................................................
10
THE
DEVELOPMENT
OF
FREUD'S
IDEAS
............................................................................................................
10
NATURPHILOSOPHIE
AND
ITS
REJECTION
.......................................................................................................
15
ENERGY
AND
EVOLUTION.
.......................................................................................................................................
17
Freud's
Two
Images
of
Man
............................................................................................
20
FREUD’S
HUMANISTIC
IMAGE
OF
MAN
..............................................................................................................
21
FREUD'S
MECHANISTIC
IMAGE
OF
MAN
............................................................................................................
25
IMPLICATIONS
OF
THE
TWO
IMAGES
.................................................................................................................
29
Freud’s
Cognitive
Style
...................................................................................................
34
CHARACTER
STYLE
......................................................................................................................................................
35
NATURE
OF
FREUD'S
INTELLECT
..........................................................................................................................
36
SELF-­‐CRITICAL
DOUBTS
VERSUS
SELF-­‐CONFIDENT
DETERMINATION
.............................................
39
ANALYSIS
VERSUS
SYNTHESIS
...............................................................................................................................
43
DIALECTIC
DUALISM.
..................................................................................................................................................
43
TOLERATED
CONTRADICTION
(SYNTHESIS
DEFERRED)
..........................................................................
44
CONCEPTION
OF
SCIENTIFIC
METHOD
AND
CONCEPTS.
...........................................................................
47
STYLE
OF
THEORIZING
...............................................................................................................................................
50

5. METHOD
OF
WORK.
.....................................................................................................................................................
56
METHOD
OF
PROVING
POINTS
(VERIFICATION)
...........................................................................................
59
USE
OF
FIGURES
OF
SPEECH
....................................................................................................................................
65
FREUD'S
RHETORIC.
....................................................................................................................................................
69
SUMMARY
.........................................................................................................................................................................
74
A
Decalogue
for
the
Reader
of
Freud
..............................................................................
80
References
......................................................................................................................
83

6. Acknowledgments
Preparation
of
this
paper
was
supported
by
a
United
States
Public
Health
Service
Research
Career
Award,
Grant
No.
5-­‐K06-­‐MH-­‐124555,
from
the
National
Institute
of
Mental
Health.
Note:
This
work
was
originally
included
as
the
initial
section
of
Abstracts
of
the
Standard
Edition
of
the
Complete
Psychological
Works
of
Sigmund
Freud
edited
by
Carrie
Lee
Rothgeb.
Any
reference
by
the
author
to
the
Abstracts
is
indicating
the
full
text.

7. Introduction1
Erich
Fromm
once
remarked,
in
a
seminar
I
attended
at
the
Washington
School
of
Psychiatry
approximately
30
years
ago,
that
Freud
and
Marx
had
this
in
common:
both
were
the
indispensable
starting
points
for
students
of
their
respective
subject
matters,
although
practically
everything
they
said
was
wrong.
Fresh
from
my
own
psychoanalysis
and
fired
with
enthusiasm
as
I
was
for
Freud’s
work,
I
greeted
this
judgment
with
incredulity,
even
scorn;
but
as
the
decades
have
taken
me
deeper
into
the
repeated
study
of
Freud’s
writings,
I
have
begun
to
feel
that
Fromm’s
statement
was
indeed
worth
remembering.
In
its
dramatic
hyperbole,
it
was
itself
a
very
Freudian
proposition,
as
I
shall
try
to
demonstrate
below,
making
a
point
the
validity
of
which
could
be
appreciated
if
one
saw
its
vehicle
as
rhetoric
rather
than
as
scientific
weighing
of
evidence.
Yes,
much
of
what
Freud
had
to
say
is
more
or
less
false
unless
read
sympathetically—
that
is,
not,
with
the
desire
to
find
him
right
at
all
costs,
but
to
learn
from
him.
He
is
vulnerable
to
almost
any
diligent
critic
who
wants
to
find
him
in
error,
and
he
has
never
lacked
for
that
kind
of
antagonist
though
many
of
them
have
been
so
heavy-­‐handed
and
obviously
biased
as
to
defeat
their
own
destructive
purpose.
Major
figures
in
other
sciences
who
were
Freud’s
contemporaries
are
comparably
vulnerable,
of
course.
It
would
be
no
1
Parts
of
the
text
have
been
adapted,
with
permission
of
the
publishers,
from
previously
published
papers
(Holt.
1963,
1965b.
1968,
1972).
I
am
grateful
to
Aldine
Publishing
Co..
the
American
Image,
and
the
Macmillan
Co.
for
their
kind
cooperation.

8. trick
for
a
pathologist
to
find
many
statements
in
the
writings
of
Rudolf
Virchow
that
are
false
by
contemporary
standards,
or
for
a
physiologist
to
do
a
hatchet
job
on
Claude
Bernard;
but
in
other
sciences
that
kind
of
hostile
evaluation
of
the
great
historical
figures
is
not
common,
because
it
is
taken
for
granted
that
scientific
truth
is
always
partial,
relative
to
and
limited
by
its
historical
context,
and
inevitably
subject
to
correction
even
when
not
wholly
superseded.
It
would
be
difficult
indeed
to
find
another
scientist
born
in
the
middle
decade
of
the
nineteenth
century
whose
work
has
not
been
left
behind
just
as
much
as
Freud’s.
And
yet
Freud
is
much
more
than
a
historical
figure.
Again
Fromm
was
right:
he
is
surely
the
indispensable
starting
point
for
any
serious
student
of
psychoanalysis
or
psychotherapy
and
for
(at
the
least)
many
serious
students
of
psychology,
psychiatry,
and
the
other
behavioral
sciences;
not
as
a
source
of
infallible
wisdom,
for
there
is
none
such
to
be
found
anywhere;
not
as
an
intellectual
father
to
be
swallowed
whole
in
a
fantasied
act
of
magical
identification;
and
not
as
a
generator
of
propositions
that
can
be
carried
directly
to
the
laboratory
for
rigorous
verification
or
falsification.
But
read
sympathetically
and
with
appropriate
caution,
Freud
still
has
an
enormous
amount
to
teach
us
about
myriad
aspects
of
human
beings,
their
ways
of
growing
up
and
of
failing
to
thrive,
their
peculiarities,
kinks,
and
quirks,
and
above
all
about
their
secret
lives.
This
collection
of
indexed
abstracts,
now
easily
available
to
a
wide
audience,
will
prove
particularly
valuable
as
a
sample
of
and
guide
to
the
formidable
bulk
of
the
Standard
Edition
of
the
Complete
Psychological
Works
of
Sigmund
Freud.
Any
reader
who
picks
it
up
in
the
hope
of
finding
a
quick
and
easy
summary,
a
Freud
boiled
down
to
one
delicious
and

9. super-­‐nutritious
drop,
is
bound
to
be
disappointed.
It
is
no
Reader’s
Digest
job,
not
a
‘‘classic
condensed
for
everyman”
in
the
American
commercial
tradition
that
reduces
any
work
of
substance
to
a
few
easily
digested
clichés.
I
see
it,
rather,
as
much
more
like
the
psychologist’s
indispensable
bibliographic
aid,
the
Psychological
Abstracts:
an
entry
into
a
large
literature
through
an
index
by
which
articles
relevant
to
a
topic
of
interest
can
be
located
and
then
sampled
with
the
aid
of
expertly
condensed
summaries.
It
will
not
substitute
for,
but
will
facilitate,
a
reading
of
Freud
in
his
own
words.
The
remainder
of
these
introductory
remarks
has
the
same
objective.
In
a
different
way,
they
are
intended
to
orient,
forearm,
alert,
prime,
or
precondition
the
reader,
so
that
he
or
she
may
enjoy
Freud
more,
be
less
confused
by
him,
misinterpret
him
less
often,
and
grasp
better
what
he
has
to
offer,
than
would
be
the
case
by
approaching
his
writings
unprepared.
For
the
modem
reader
of
Freud
must
expect
a
mixture
of
delights
and
difficulties.
On
the
positive
side,
Freud
remains
enjoyably
and
absorbingly
readable,
even
in
translation
plainly
a
master
of
prose.
On
the
negative,
however,
anyone
who
is
not
thoroughly
versed
in
his
works
and
acquainted
with
certain
other
literatures,
repeatedly
encounters
baffling
difficulties
in
grasping
his
meaning
in
any
but
a
general
sense.

10. Historical
Background
for
a
Reading
of
Freud
To
some
degree,
the
problems
are
those
to
be
expected
in
reading
European
works
of
almost
any
kind
that
are
from
35
to
more
than
80
years
old.
Some
terminology
is
bound
to
be
outdated,
some
references
to
scientific
or
literary
works
or
to
then-­‐current
events
that
Freud
could
assume
his
contemporary
readers
were
familiar
with
convey
nothing
any
longer
or
even
give
misleading
impressions;
and
an
American
reader
who
does
not
know
the
continental
literary
classics
is
especially
handicapped.
To
a
large
extent
but
not
completely,
the
devoted
editorship
of
Strachey
anticipates
such
problems
and
his
footnotes
provide
helpful
explanations.
Other
problems
arise
from
Freud's
habit
of
occasionally
assuming
that
the
reader
knew
his
previous
works,
even
his
unpublished
ones.
Thus,
a
great
deal
that
was
baffling
about
Chapter
7
of
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams
(Freud,
1900)—e.g.,
his
reference
to
the
undefined
and
unexplained-­‐systems—became
intelligible
only
after
the
belated
publication
of
the
“Project”
(Freud,
1895).
But
in
any
event,
many
students
of
Freud
have
pointed
out
the
necessity
of
reading
him
sequentially.
His
thought
cannot
be
understood
if
his
developing
ideas
are
taken
out
of
their
own
context.
Fortunately,
the
chronological
ordering
of
the
Standard
Edition
and
of
these
abstracts
encourages
such
a
reading.
THE
DEVELOPMENT
OF
FREUD'S
IDEAS
There
were
four
major
and
overlapping
phases
of
Freud’s
scientific
work:

11. 1.
His
prepsychoanalytic
work,
which
lasted
about
20
years,
may
be
subdivided
into
an
initial
10
years
of
primarily
histological-­‐anatomical
research
and
a
partly
overlapping
14
years
of
clinical
neurology,
with
increasing
attention
to
psychopathology,
beginning
in
1886
when
he
returned
from
Paris.
2.
The
first
theory
of
neurosis
dates
from
the
decade
of
the
1890’s,
when
Freud
used
hypnosis
and
Breuer’s
cathartic
method
of
psychotherapy,
gradually
developing
the
psychoanalytic
methods
of
free
association,
dream
interpretation,
and
the
analysis
of
transference.
The
first
dozen
truly
psychoanalytic
papers
appeared
during
this
time,
expounding
the
view
that
neurosis
is
a
defense
against
intolerable
memories
of
a
traumatic
experience—infantile
seduction
at
the
hands
of
a
close
relative.
With
the
discovery
of
his
own
Oedipus
complex,
however,
Freud
came
to
see
that
such
reports
by
his
patients
were
fantasies,
which
led
him
to
turn
his
interest
away
from
traumatic
events
in
external
reality
and
toward
subjective
psychic
reality.
A
notable
but
only
recently
discovered
event
in
the
development
of
Freud’s
thought
occurred
in
1895
after
the
publication
of
the
book
he
wrote
with
Breuer.
He
wrote
but
did
not
publish
a
“Psychology
for
Neurologists”
(or
“Project
for
a
Scientific
Psychology,”
hereafter
called
merely
“the
Project”),
presenting
a
comprehensive
anatomical-­‐physiological
model
of
the
nervous
system
and
its
functioning
in
normal
behavior,
thought,
and
dreams,
as
well
as
in
hysteria.
He
sent
it
to
his
friend
Fliess
in
high
excitement,
then
quickly
became
discouraged
by
the
difficulties
of
creating
a
thoroughgoing
mechanistic
and
reductionistic
psychology.
He
tinkered
with
the
model
for
a
couple
of
years
in
letters
to
Fliess,
and
finally
gave
it
up.
The
turn
of
the
century
marked
many
basic
changes
in
Freud’s
life
and
work:
he

12. severed
his
close
and
dependent
friendships
with
colleagues
(first
Breuer,
then
Fliess)
and
his
contacts
with
the
Viennese
medical
society;
his
father
died;
his
last
child
was
born;
he
psychoanalyzed
himself;
he
gave
up
neurological
practice,
research,
and
conceptual
models;
and
he
created
his
own
new
profession,
research
method,
and
theory,
in
terms
of
which
he
worked
thereafter.
3.
Freud’s
topographic
model
of
the
“psychic
apparatus’’
was
the
foundation
of
two
decades
of
work
during
which
he
published
his
major
clinical
discoveries:
notably,
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams
(1900)
and
Three
Essays
on
the
Theory
of
Sexuality
(1905b);
his
papers
on
the
technique
used
in
psychoanalytic
treatment;
his
five
major
case
histories;
the
central
works
of
metapsychology;
and
a
series
of
important
surveys
and
popularizations
of
his
ideas,
in
addition
to
his
principal
applications
of
his
theories
to
jokes,
literature
and
art,
biography,
and
anthropology.
A
complete
or
metapsychological
explanation,
Freud
wrote
in
1915,
requires
“describing
a
psychical
process
in
its
dynamic,
topographical
and
economic
aspects’’—that
is,
in
terms
of
a
theoretical
model
in
which
the
central
concepts
are
psychological
forces,
structures,
and
quantities
of
energy
(Rapaport
&
Gill,
1959).
Hence,
we
speak
of
three
metapsychological
points
of
view.
The
topographic
model,
which
was
first
set
forth
in
Chapter
7
of
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams
and
was
further
elaborated
in
the
metapsychological
papers
of
1915,
conceptualizes
thought
and
behavior
in
terms
of
processes
in
three
psychological
systems:
the
Conscious,
Preconscious,
and
Unconscious
(none
of
which
has
an
explicit
locus
in
the
brain).
4.
In
the
final
period,
between
the
two
world
wars,
Freud
made
four
main
types
of
contribution:
the
final
form
of
his
theory
of
instinctual
drives
(Beyond
the
Pleasure

13. Principle,
1920);
a
group
of
major
modifications
of
both
general
and
clinical
theory—most
notably,
the
structural
model
of
the
psychic
apparatus
(The
Ego
and
the
Id,
1923)
and
the
theory
of
anxiety
and
defense
(Inhibitions,
Symptoms
and
Anxiety,
1926a);
applications
of
psychoanalysis
to
larger
social
problems;
and
a
group
of
books
reviewing
and
reformulating
his
theories.
To
grasp
the
structure
of
Freud’s
work,
it
is
useful
not
only
to
adopt
such
a
developmental
approach
but
also
to
view
his
theories
from
the
perspective
of
the
following
threefold
classification.
First
and
best
known
is
the
clinical
theory
of
psychoanalysis,
with
its
psychopathology,
its
accounts
of
psychosexual
development
and
character
formation,
and
the
like.
The
subject
matter
of
this
type
of
theorizing
consists
of
major
events
(both
real
and
fantasied)
in
the
life
histories
of
persons,
events
occurring
over
spans
of
time
ranging
from
days
to
decades.
This
theory
is
the
stock
in
trade
of
the
clinician—not
just
the
psychoanalyst,
but
the
vast
majority
of
psychiatrists,
clinical
psychologists,
and
psychiatric
social
workers.
Loosely
referred
to
as
“psychodynamics,”
it
has
even
penetrated
into
general
academic
psychology
via
textbooks
on
personality.
Second,
there
is
what
Rapaport
(1959)
has
called
the
general
theory
of
psychoanalysis,
also
called
metapsychology.
Its
subject
matter—processes
in
a
hypothetical
psychic
apparatus
or,
at
times,
in
the
brain—is
more
abstract
and
impersonal;
and
the
periods
of
time
involved
are
much
shorter—from
fractions
of
a
second
up
to
a
few
hours.
The
processes
dealt
with
are
mostly
those
occurring
in
dreams,
thinking,
affect,
and
defense.
Freud’s
reasoning
in
working
out
this
theory
is
much
closer,
and
he
made
more
use
of

14. theoretical
models
of
the
psychic
apparatus.
The
main
works
are
the
“Project
for
a
Scientific
Psychology,”
Chapter
7
of
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams,
and
the
metapsychological
papers.
Third
is
what
might
be
called
Freud's
phylogenetic
theory.
The
subject
matter
is
man
as
a
species
or
in
groups,
and
the
periods
of
time
involved
range
from
generations
to
eons.
Here
are
Freud’s
grand
speculations,
largely
evolutionary
and
teleological
in
character.
They
contain
no
explicit
models
of
a
psychic
apparatus,
employing
instead
many
literary,
metaphorical
concepts.
The
principal
works
of
this
type
are
Totem
and
Taboo
(1913),
Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle
(1920),
Group
Psychology
and
the
Analysis
of
the
Ego
(1921),
The
Future
of
an
Illusion
(1927),
Civilization
and
Its
Discontents
(1930),
and
Moses
and
Monotheism
(1934-­‐1938).
His
clinical
contributions
are
among
the
earliest
of
Freud’s
papers
that
are
still
being
read,
and
he
continued
to
write
in
this
vein
all
his
life.
As
for
the
other
two
types
of
theory,
the
major
metapsychological
works
came
early,
the
main
phylogenetic
ones
late.
As
Freud’s
concepts
became
more
metaphorical
and
dealt
with
such
remote
issues
as
man's
ultimate
origins
and
the
meaning
of
life
and
death,
he
became
less
concerned
with
describing
or
systematically
accounting
for
the
course
and
fate
of
an
impulse
or
thought.
Even
when
Freud’s
works
are
read
in
the
order
in
which
he
wrote
them,
much
remains
obscure
if
one
has
no
conception
of
the
contemporary
status
of
the
scientific
and
professional
issues
he
was
discussing.
Fortunately
for
us,
modern
scholars
are
supplying
a
good
deal
of
this
needed
background
(e.g.,
Amacher,
1965;
Andersson,
1962;
Bernfeld,
1944;
Ellenberger,
1970;
Jackson,
1969;
Spehlmann,
1953;
see
also
Holt,
1965a,
1968).
The

15. relevant
chapters
of
Ellenberger’s
masterly
history
are
especially
recommended
for
the
scholarly
but
absorbingly
readable
way
in
which
they
give
the
social
and
political
as
well
as
scientific,
medical,
and
general
intellectual
contexts
in
which
Freud
was
writing.
Here,
I
can
do
no
more
than
touch
lightly
on
a
number
of
the
most
important
and
relevant
intellectual
currents
of
the
nineteenth
century.
NATURPHILOSOPHIE
AND
ITS
REJECTION
The
way
for
the
romantic
revolt
that
broadly
characterized
all
aspects
of
intellectual
life
in
the
early
1800’s
had
been
prepared
by
Naturphilosophie,
a
mystical
and
often
rhapsodic
view
of
Nature
as
perfused
with
spirit
and
with
conflicting
unconscious
forces
and
as
evolving
according
to
an
inner,
purposive
design.
Not
a
tightly
knit
school,
its
constituent
thinkers
included
(in
chronological
order)
Kant,
Lamarck,
Goethe,
Hegel,
Schelling
(perhaps
the
central
figure),
Oken,
and
Fechner.
With
the
exception
of
Fechner,
who
lived
from
1801
to
1887,
they
all
lived
athwart
the
eighteenth
and
nineteenth
centuries.
Naturphilosophie
encouraged
the
recrudescence
of
vitalism
in
biology,
championed
by
the
great
physiologist
Johannes
Muller,
and
stimulated
a
humanistic
school
of
romantic
medicine
(Galdston,
1956).
In
psychiatry,
the
early
part
of
the
century
was
dominated
by
the
reforms
of
Pinel,
Esquirol,
and
their
followers,
who
introduced
an
era
of
“moral
treatment":
firm
kindness
in
place
of
restraints,
therapeutic
optimism
based
on
etiological
theories
of
a
more
psychological
than
organic
cast,
and
an
attempt
to
involve
inmates
of
asylums
in
constructive
activities.
The
tough-­‐minded
reaction
to
this
tender-­‐minded
era
was
greatly
aided
by
the
strides
being
made
in
physics
and
chemistry.
Three
of
Muller's
students,
Brücke,
du
Bois-­‐

16. Reymond,
and
Helmholtz,
met
Carl
Ludwig
in
1847
and
formed
a
club
(which
became
the
Berlin
Physical
Society)
to
“constitute
physiology
on
a
chemico-­‐physical
foundation,
and
give
it
equal
scientific
rank
with
Physics”
(Ludwig,
quoted
by
Cranefield,
1957,
p.
407).
They
did
not
succeed
in
their
frankly
reductionist
aim
but
did
attain
their
other
objectives:
to
promote
the
use
of
scientific
observation
and
experiment
in
physiology,
and
to
combat
vitalism.
Among
themselves,
they
held
to
the
following
program:
No
other
forces
than
the
common
physical-­‐chemical
ones
are
active
within
the
organism.
In
those
cases
which
cannot
at
the
time
be
explained
by
these
forces
one
has
either
to
find
the
specific
way
or
form
of
their
action
by
means
of
the
physical-­‐
mathematical
method,
or
to
assume
new
forces
equal
in
dignity
to
the
chemical-­‐
physical
forces
inherent
in
matter,
reducible
to
the
force
of
attraction
and
repulsion,
(du
Bois-­‐Reymond,
quoted
by
Bernfeld,
1944,
p.
348)
In
Germany
especially,
this
materialistic
ferment
of
physicalistic
physiology,
mechanism,
and
reductionism
became
the
mode,
gradually
putting
romantic
medicine,
vitalism,
and
other
aspects
of
Naturphilosophie
to
rout.
Where
earlier
there
had
been
Psychic,
Psycho-­‐somatic,
and
Somatic
schools
in
German
psychiatry
(see
Earle,
1854,
in
Hunter
&
Macalpine,
1963,
pp.
1015-­‐1018),
the
Somatic
gradually
won
out;
Meynert
(Freud’s
teacher
of
psychiatry),
for
example,
conceived
mental
disorders
to
be
diseases
of
the
forebrain.
Despite
its
therapeutic
successes,
moral
treatment
was
banished
along
with
its
psychogenic
(often
sexual)
theories
as
“old
wives'
psychiatry,’’
in
favor
of
strictly
organic-­‐hereditarian
views
and
very
little
by
way
of
therapy
(Bry
&
Rifkin,
1962).
The
University
of
Vienna
medical
school
was
an
outpost
of
the
new
hyperscientific
biology,
with
one
of
its
promulgators,
Brücke,
holding
a
major
chair
and
directing
the
Physiological
Institute
(Bernfeld,
1944).
Ironically,
Freud
tells
us
that
his
decision
to
enter

17. medical
school
was
determined
by
hearing
the
“Fragment
on
Nature’’
attributed
to
Goethe
read
aloud
at
a
public
lecture.
This
short
prose
poem
is
an
epitome
of
Naturphilosophie,
and
it
must
have
swayed
Freud
because
of
his
longstanding
admiration
for
Goethe
and
perhaps
because
of
a
“longing
for
philosophical
knowledge,’’
which
had
dominated
his
early
years,
as
he
said
later
in
a
letter
to
Fliess.
Evolution
had
been
a
major
tenet
of
Naturphilosophie;
so
it
is
not
surprising
that
this
1780
dithyramb
could
be
part
of
a
lecture
on
comparative
anatomy,
the
discipline
that
furnished
much
of
the
crucial
evidence
for
Darwin’s
Origin
of
Species
(1859).
ENERGY
AND
EVOLUTION
Perhaps
the
two
most
exciting
concepts
of
the
nineteenth
century
were
energy
and
evolution.
Both
of
these
strongly
influenced
Freud’s
teachers
at
the
medical
school.
Helmholtz
had
read
to
the
1847
group
his
fundamental
paper
on
the
conservation
of
energy—presented
as
a
contribution
to
physiology.
Thirty
years
later,
Brücke’s
lectures
were
full
of
the
closely
related
(and
still
poorly
differentiated)
concepts
of
energy
and
force.
To
use
these
dynamic
concepts
was
the
very
hallmark
of
the
scientific
approach;
Brücke
taught
that
the
“real
causes
are
symbolized
in
science
by
the
word
‘force’
’’(Bernfeld,
1944,
p.
349).
It
seems
obvious
that
the
first
of
Freud’s
three
metapsychological
points
of
view,
the
dynamic
(explanation
in
terms
of
psychological
forces),
had
its
origins
in
this
exciting
attempt
to
raise
the
scientific
level
of
physiology
by
the
diligent
application
of
mechanics
and
especially
of
dynamics,
that
branch
of
mechanics
dealing
with
forces
and
the
laws
of
motion.
The
heavily
quantitative
emphasis
of
the
school
of
Helmholtz
and
its
stress
on
energy
are
clearly
the
main
determinants
of
metapsychology
seen
from
the
economic
point
of
view
(explanation
in
terms
of
quantities
of
energy).
The
fact
that,
among

18. authors
Freud
respected
most,
such
disparate
figures
as
Fechner
and
Hughlings
Jackson
held
to
dynamic
and
economic
viewpoints
no
doubt
strengthened
Freud's
unquestioning
conviction
that
these
viewpoints
are
absolutely
necessary
elements
of
an
explanatory
theory.
Despite
its
physicalistic
program,
the
actual
work
of
Brücke’s
institute
was
largely
classical
physiology
and
histology.
Freud
had
had
his
Darwinian
scientific
baptism
under
Claus
in
a
microscopic
search
for
the
missing
testes
of
the
eel,
and
his
several
attempts
at
physiological
and
chemical
experiments
under
other
auspices
were
fruitless.
He
was
happy,
therefore,
to
stay
at
the
microscope
where
Brücke
assigned
him
neurohistological
studies,
inspired
by
and
contributing
to
evolutionary
theory.
When
he
worked
with
Meynert,
it
was
again
in
a
structural
discipline
with
a
genetic
method—the
study
of
brain
anatomy
using
a
series
of
fetal
brains
to
trace
the
medullar
pathways
by
following
their
development.
His
subsequent
clinical
practice
was
in
neurology,
a
discipline
which,
as
Bernfeld
(1951)
has
noted,
was
"merely
a
diagnostic
application
of
anatomy.”
Moreover,
Freud's
first
full-­‐scale
theoretical
model,
the
“Project”
of
1895,
is
foremost
a
theory
about
the
structural
organization
of
the
brain,
both
gross
and
fine.
His
early
training
thus
demonstrably
convinced
him
that
a
scientific
theory
has
to
have
a
structural
(or
topographic)
base.
It
was
Bernfeld
(1944)
who
first
pointed
out
the
strikingly
antithetical
content
of
these
two
coexisting
intellectual
traditions—Naturphilosophie
and
physicalistic
physiology—
both
of
which
profoundly
influenced
Freud,
and
in
that
order.
In
his
published
works,
to
be
sure,
hardly
anything
of
Naturphilosophie
can
be
seen
in
the
papers
and
books
of
his
first
two
periods,
and
it
emerged
almost
entirely
in
what
I
have
cited
above
as
his
phylogenetic,

19. speculative
works.
Many
properties
of
his
concept
of
psychic
energy
can
nevertheless
be
traced
to
the
vitalism
that
was
a
prominent
feature
of
Naturphilosophie
(Holt,
1967).
Moreover,
these
two
schools
of
thought
may
also
be
seen
as
particular
manifestations
of
even
broader,
more
inclusive
bodies
of
ideas,
which
I
call
(following
Chein,
1972)
images
of
man.

20. Freud's
Two
Images
of
Man
I
believe
that
there
is
a
pervasive,
unresolved
conflict
within
all
of
Freud’s
writings
between
two
antithetical
images;
a
conflict
that
is
responsible
for
a
good
many
of
the
contradictions
in
his
entire
output
but
that
his
cognitive
make-­‐up
allowed
him
to
tolerate
(as
we
shall
shortly
see).
On
the
one
hand,
the
main
thrust
of
Freud’s
theoretical
effort
was
to
construct
what
he
himself
called
a
metapsychology,
modeled
on
a
mid-­‐nineteenth-­‐
century
grasp
of
physics
and
chemistry.
Partly
embodied
in
this
and
partly
lying
behind
it
is
what
I
call
his
mechanistic
image
of
man.
The
opposing
view,
so
much
less
prominent
that
many
students
are
not
aware
that
Freud
held
it,
I
like
to
call
a
humanistic
image
of
man.
It
may
be
seen
in
his
clinical
works
and
in
the
broad,
speculative,
quasi-­‐philosophical
writings
of
his
later
years,
but
it
is
clearest
in
Freud’s
own
life
and
interactions
with
others,
best
verbalized
for
us
perhaps
in
his
letters.
Unlike
the
mechanistic
image,
the
humanistic
conception
of
man
was
never
differentiated
and
stated
explicitly
enough
to
be
called
a
model;
yet
it
comprises
a
fairly
rich
and
cohesive
body
of
assumptions
about
the
nature
of
human
beings,
which
functioned
in
Freud’s
mind
as
a
corrective
antagonist
of
his
mechanistic
leanings.
There
is
little
evidence
after
1900
that
Freud
was
conscious
of
harboring
incompatible
images
of
man,
neither
of
which
he
could
give
up.
Nevertheless,
many
otherwise
puzzling
aspects
of
psychoanalysis
become
intelligible
if
we
assume
that
both
images
were
there,
functioning
in
many
ways
like
conflicting
motive
systems.

21. Let
me
emphasize
that
what
I
am
going
to
present
is
not
an
epitome
of
various
theories
specifically
proposed
by
Freud.
Rather,
the
two
images
are
inferred
complexes
of
ideas,
extracted
from
Freud’s
life
and
writings
and
reconstructed
in
much
the
same
way
he
taught
us
to
use
in
understanding
neurotic
people:
by
studying
a
patient’s
dreams,
symptoms,
and
“associations,”
we
infer
unconscious
fantasies,
complexes,
or
early
memories
that
never
become
fully
conscious,
but
which
enable
us
to
make
sense
out
of
his
productions,
which
seem
on
the
surface
so
bewilderingly
diverse.
This
endeavor
is
fraught
with
a
certain
amount
of
risk.
Even
the
mechanistic
image
was
made
explicit
as
a
theoretical
model
only
in
the
“Project,”
the
unpublished
attempt
at
a
neuropsychology
that
Freud
wrote
in
1895.
Thereafter,
this
model
seems
to
have
been
largely
forgotten
or
suppressed
along
with
its
antithesis,
the
humanistic
image.
FREUD’S
HUMANISTIC
IMAGE
OF
MAN
Neither
of
Freud's
images
was
especially
original
with
him;
each
was
his
personal
synthesis
of
a
body
of
ideas
with
a
long
cultural
history,
expressed
and
transmitted
to
him
in
considerable
part
through
books
we
know
he
read.
Long
before
and
long
after
Freud
decided
to
become
a
scientist,
he
was
an
avid
reader
of
the
belletristic
classics
that
are
often
considered
the
core
of
western
man’s
humanistic
heritage.
He
had
an
excellent
liberal
and
classical
education,
which
gave
him
a
thorough
grounding
in
the
great
works
of
Greek,
Latin,
German,
and
English
authors,
as
well
as
the
Bible,
Cervantes,
Moliere,
and
other
major
writers
in
other
languages,
which
he
read
in
translation.
He
was
a
man
of
deep
culture,
with
a
lifelong
passion
for
reading
poetry,
novels,
essays,
and
the
like
and
for
learning
about
classical
antiquity
in
particular
but
the
arts
generally,
through
travel,
collecting,
and
personal
communication
with
artists,
writers,
and
close
friends
who
had

22. similar
tastes
and
education.2
And
despite
his
later,
negative
comments
about
philosophy,
he
attended
no
less
than
five
courses
and
seminars
with
the
distinguished
philosopher-­‐
psychologist
Brentano
during
his
years
at
the
University
of
Vienna.
Very
few
of
the
many
nonphysicians
who
were
drawn
to
psychoanalysis
and
who
became
part
of
Freud’s
circle
were
trained
in
the
“harder”
or
natural
sciences.
Mainly,
they
came
from
the
arts
and
humanities.
For
every
Waelder
(a
physicist)
there
were
a
few
like
Sachs
and
Kris
(students
primarily
of
literature
and
art).
Surely
this
tells
us
something
not
only
about
influences
on
Freud
but
the
kind
of
man
he
was,
the
conception
of
man
by
which
he
lived
and
which
was
conveyed
by
subtle
means
to
his
co-­‐workers.
In
various
ways,
then,
Freud
came
under
the
influence
of
the
prevailing
image
of
man
conveyed
by
the
important
sector
of
western
culture
we
call
the
humanities.
Let
me
now
outline
some
of
the
major
components
of
this
image
of
man,
which
can
be
discerned
in
Freud’s
writings.
1. Man
is
both
an
animal
and
something
more,
a
creature
with
aspirations
to
divinity.
Thus,
he
has
a
dual
nature.
He
possesses
carnal
passions,
vegetative
functions,
greed
and
lust
for
power,
destructiveness,
selfish
concern
with
maximizing
pleasure
and
minimizing
pain;
but
he
also
has
a
capacity
to
develop
art,
literature,
religion,
science,
and
philosophy—the
abstract
realms
of
theoretical
and
esthetic
values—and
to
be
unselfish,
altruistic,
and
nurturant.
This
is
a
complex
view
of
man
from
the
outset,
as
a
creature
who
cares
deeply
about
higher
as
well
as
lower
matters.
2
Ellenberger
(1970,
p.
460)
tells
us
that
Freud
showed
the
playwright
Lenormand
“the
works
of
Shakespeare
and
of
the
Greek
tragedians
on
his
[office]
shelves
and
said:
‘Here
are
my
masters.'
He
maintained
that
the
essential
themes
of
his
theories
were
based
on
the
intuition
of
the
poets."

23. 2. Each
human
being
is
unique,
yet
all
men
are
alike,
one
species,
each
one
as
human
as
any
other.
This
assumption
carries
a
strong
value
commitment
as
well,
to
the
proposition
that
each
person
is
worthy
to
be
respected
and
to
be
helped,
if
in
trouble,
to
live
up
to
the
extent
of
his
capacities,
however
limited
they
may
be.
Freud
was
one
of
the
main
contributors
of
an
important
extension
of
this
assumption
through
his
discovery
that
there
was
indeed
method
in
madness
(as
Shakespeare
knew
intuitively),
that
the
insane
or
mentally
ill
could
be
understood
and
in
fact
were
actuated
by
the
same
basic
desires
as
other
men.
Thus,
in
the
tradition
of
such
psychiatrists
as
Pinel,
Freud
did
a
great
deal
to
reassert
the
humanity
of
the
mentally
and
emotionally
abnormal
and
their
continuity
with
the
normal.
3. Man
is
a
creature
of
longings,
a
striver
after
goals
and
values,
after
fantasies
and
images
of
gratification
and
of
danger.
That
is,
he
is
capable
of
imagining
possible
future
states
of
pleasure,
sensual
joy
or
spiritual
fulfillment,
and
of
pain,
humiliation,
guilt,
destruction,
etc.;
and
his
behavior
is
guided
and
impelled
by
wishes
to
obtain
the
positive
goals
and
to
avoid
or
nullify
the
negative
ones,
principally
anxiety.
4. Man
is
a
producer
and
processor
of
subjective
meanings,
by
which
he
defines
himself,
and
one
of
his
strongest
needs
is
to
find
his
life
meaningful.
It
is
implicit
in
the
humanistic
image
that
meanings
are
primary,
irreducible,
causally
efficacious,
and
of
complete
dignity
as
a
subject
of
systematic
interest.
Psychopathology,
accordingly,
is
conceived
of
in
terms
of
maladaptive
complexes
or
configurations
of
ideas,
wishes,
concepts,
percepts,
etc.
5. There
is
much
more
to
man
than
he
knows
or
would
usually
want
us
to
think,
more

24. than
is
present
in
his
consciousness,
more
than
is
presented
to
the
social
world
in
public.
This
secret
side
is
extraordinarily
important.
The
meanings
that
concern
a
person
most,
including
fantasies
and
wishes,
are
constantly
active
without
awareness,
and
it
is
difficult
for
people
to
become
aware
of
many
of
them.
To
understand
a
person
truly,
it
is
therefore
necessary
to
know
his
subjective,
inner
life—his
dreams,
fantasies,
longings,
preoccupations,
anxieties,
and
the
special
coloring
with
which
he
sees
the
outer
world.
By
comparison,
his
easily
observed,
overt
behavior
is
much
less
interesting
and
less
important.
6. Inner
conflict
is
inevitable
because
of
man’s
dualities—his
higher
and
lower
natures,
conscious
and
unconscious
sides;
moreover,
many
of
his
wishes
are
mutually
incompatible
or
bring
him
into
conflict
with
demands
and
pressures
from
other
people.
7. Perhaps
the
most
important
of
these
wishes
comprises
the
complex
instinct
of
love,
of
which
sexual
lust
is
a
major
(and
itself
complicated)
part.
Man's
urge
for
sexual
pleasure
is
almost
always
strong,
persistent,
and
polymorphous,
even
when
it
seems
thoroughly
inhibited
or
blocked,
and
may
be
detached
from
love.
At
the
same
time,
Freud
was
always
sensitive
to
the
many
forms
of
anger,
hate,
and
destructiveness,
long
before
he
formally
acknowledged
them
with
his
theory
of
the
death
instinct.
8. Man
is
an
intensely
social
creature,
whose
life
is
distorted
and
abnormal
if
not
enmeshed
in
a
web
of
relationships
to
other
people—some
of
these
relationships
formal
and
institutionalized,
some
informal
but
conscious
and
deliberate,
and
many
of
them
having
important
unconscious
components.
Most
human
motive
systems
are
interpersonal
in
character,
too:
we
love
and
hate
other
people.
Thus,
the
important
reality
for
man
is
social
and
cultural.
These
Sullivanian-­‐sounding
propositions
are
clearly
implicit
in
Freud's

25. case
histories.
9. A
central
feature
of
this
image
of
man
is
that
he
is
not
static
but
is
always
changing—
developing
and
declining,
evolving
and
devolving.
His
most
important
unconscious
motives
derive
from
experiences
in
childhood—the
child
is
father
to
the
man.
Man
is
part
of
an
evolutionary
universe,
thus
in
principle
almost
infinitely
perfectible
though
in
practice
always
subject
to
setbacks,
fixations,
and
regressions.
10. Man
is
both
the
active
master
of
his
own
fate
and
the
plaything
of
his
passions.
He
is
capable
of
choosing
among
alternatives,
of
resisting
temptations
and
of
governing
his
own
urges,
even
though
at
times
he
is
a
passive
pawn
of
external
pressures
and
inner
impulses.
It
therefore
makes
sense
to
try
to
deal
with
him
in
a
rational
way,
to
hope
to
influence
his
behavior
by
discussing
things
and
even
urging
him
to
exert
his
will.
Thus,
man
has
both
an
id
and
an
autonomous
ego.
Extracted
from
a
body
of
work
in
which
it
has
no
systematic
place,
this
humanistic
image,
as
presented,
is
somewhat
vague
and
poorly
organized.
Nevertheless,
I
see
no
intrinsic
reason
why
it
could
not
be
explicated
and
developed
in
a
more
systematic
way.
FREUD'S
MECHANISTIC
IMAGE
OF
MAN
This
humanistically
educated
and
philosophically
inclined
young
man,
fired
by
a
romantic
and
vitalistic
conception
of
the
biology
he
wanted
to
study,
went
to
the
University
of
Vienna
medical
school,
where
he
found
himself
surrounded
by
men
of
great
prestige
and
intellectual
substance
teaching
exciting
scientific
doctrines
of
a
very
different
kind.
He
underwent
a
hasty
conversion
first
to
a
radical
materialism,
and
then
to
physicalistic
physiology,
a
principal
heir
of
the
mechanistic
tradition
that
started
with
Galileo
and

26. sought
to
explain
everything
in
the
universe
in
terms
of
Newtonian
physics.
Freud
was
for
years
under
the
spell
of
Brücke,
whom
he
once
called
the
greatest
authority
he
ever
met.
Several
of
his
other
teachers
and
colleagues
were
also
enthusiastic
members
of
the
mechanistic
school
of
Helmholtz,
notably
Meynert,
Breuer,
Exner,
and
Fliess.
The
outlook
of
this
narrow
but
rigorous
doctrine
was
forever
after
to
shape
Freud’s
scientific
ideals,
lingering
behind
the
scenes
of
his
theorizing,
almost
in
the
role
of
a
scientific
superego.
In
this
sense,
I
believe
that
the
mechanistic
image
of
man
underlies
and
may
be
discerned
in
Freud’s
metapsychological
writings,
even
when
certain
aspects
of
that
image
seem
to
be
contradicted.
In
many
details,
the
mechanistic
image
is
sharply
antithetical
to
the
humanistic
one.
I
have
attempted
to
bring
out
this
contrast
in
the
following
catalogue
of
assumptions.
1. Man
is
a
proper
subject
of
natural
science,
and
as
such
is
no
different
from
any
other
object
in
the
universe.
All
of
his
behavior
is
completely
determined,
including
reports
of
dreams
and
fantasies.
That
is,
all
human
phenomena
are
lawful
and
in
principle
possible
to
explain
by
natural-­‐
scientific,
quantitative
laws.
From
this
vantage,
there
is
no
meaning
to
subdividing
his
behavior
or
to
considering
his
nature
to
be
dual—he
is
simply
an
animal,
best
understood
as
a
machine
or
apparatus,
composed
of
ingenious
mechanisms,
operating
according
to
Newton’s
laws
of
motion,
and
understandable
without
residue
in
terms
of
physics
and
chemistry.
One
need
not
postulate
a
soul
or
vital
principle
to
make
the
apparatus
run,
though
energy
is
an
essential
concept.
All
the
cultural
achievements
of
which
man
is
so
proud,
all
his
spiritual
values
and
the
like,
are
merely
sublimations
of
basic
instinctual
drives,
to
which
they
may
be
reduced.

27. 2. The
differences
among
men
are
scientifically
negligible;
from
the
mechanistic
standpoint,
all
human
beings
are
basically
the
same,
being
subject
to
the
same
universal
laws.
The
emphasis
is
put
upon
discovering
these
laws,
not
on
understanding
particular
individuals.
Accordingly,
metapsychology
takes
no
note
of
individual
differences
and
does
not
seem
to
be
a
theory
of
personality.
3. Man
is
fundamentally
motivated
by
the
automatic
tendency
of
his
nervous
system
to
keep
itself
in
an
unstimulated
state,
or
at
least
to
keep
its
tensions
at
a
constant
level.
The
basic
model
is
the
reflex
arc:
external
or
internal
stimulus
leads
to
activity
of
the
CNS
which
leads
to
response.
All
needs
and
longings
must,
for
scientific
purposes,
be
conceptualized
as
forces,
tensions
that
must
be
reduced,
or
energies
seeking
discharge.
4. There
is
no
place
for
meanings
or
value
in
science.
It
deals
with
quantities,
not
qualities,
and
must
be
thoroughly
objective.
Phenomena
such
as
thoughts,
wishes,
or
fears
are
epiphenomenal;
they
exist
and
must
be
explained,
but
have
no
explanatory
power
themselves.
Energies
largely
take
their
place
in
the
mechanical
model.
5. There
is
no
clear
antithesis
to
the
fifth
humanistic
assumption,
the
one
dealing
with
the
importance
of
the
unconscious
and
the
secret,
inner
side
of
man.
A
corresponding
reformulation
of
the
same
point
in
mechanistic
terms
might
be:
consciousness
too
is
an
epiphenomenon,3
and
what
happens
in
a
person’s
awareness
is
of
trivial
interest
compared
3
True
(as
M.
M.
Gill
has
kindly
pointed
out
to
me),
in
the
"Project"
Freud
did
explicitly
deny
that
consciousness
is
an
epiphenomenon.
Yet
the
whole
trend
of
the
“Project"
demands
the
view
he
was
unwilling
to
espouse:
it
is
an
attempt
to
account
for
behavior
and
neurosis
in
purely
mechanistic
terms,
without
the
intervention
of
any
mental
entities
in
the
causal
process.
Indeed,
I
believe
that
it
was
largely
because
he
could
not
succeed
in
his
aim
without
postulating
a
conscious
ego
as
an
agent
in
the
process
of
defense,
and
because
he
could
not
attain
a
satisfactory
mechanistic
explanation
of
consciousness,
that
Freud
abandoned
the
“Project."

28. to
the
busy
activities
of
the
nervous
system,
most
of
which
go
on
without
any
corresponding
consciousness.
6. The
many
forces
operating
in
the
apparatus
that
is
man
often
collide,
giving
rise
to
the
subjective
report
of
conflict.
7. The
processes
sentimentally
known
as
love
are
nothing
more
than
disguises
and
transformations
of
the
sexual
instinct,
or,
more
precisely,
its
energy
(libido).
Even
platonic
affection
is
merely
aim-­‐inhibited
libido.
Sex,
not
love,
is
therefore
the
prime
motive.
And
since
the
fundamental
tendency
of
the
nervous
system
is
to
restore
a
state
of
unstimulated
equilibrium,
the
total
passivity
of
death
is
its
ultimate
objective.
Rage
and
destructiveness
are
merely
disguises
and
transformations
of
the
death
instinct.
8. Objects
(that
is
to
say,
other
people)
are
important
only
insofar
as
they
provide
stimuli
that
set
the
psychic
apparatus
in
motion
and
provide
necessary
conditions
for
the
reduction
of
internal
tensions
that
brings
it
to
rest
again.
Relationships
as
such
are
not
real;
a
psychology
can
be
complete
without
considering
more
than
the
individual
apparatus
and
events
within
it,
plus
the
general
class
of
external
stimuli.
Reality
contains
“only
masses
in
motion
and
nothing
else”
(Freud,
1895,
p.
308).
9. The
genetic
emphasis
is
not
very
different
for
Freud
as
mechanist
and
as
humanist,
so
let
us
go
to
the
last
point:
10. Since
man’s
behavior
is
strictly
determined
by
his
past
history
and
by
the
contemporary
arrangement
of
forces,
free
will
is
a
fallacious
illusion.
To
allow
the
idea
of
autonomy
or
freedom
of
choice
would
imply
spontaneity
instead
of
passivity
in
the
nervous
system,
and
would
undermine
the
assumption—considered
scientifically
necessary—that

29. behavior
is
determined
strictly
by
the
biological
drives
and
by
external
stimuli.
IMPLICATIONS
OF
THE
TWO
IMAGES
Psychoanalytic
theory
as
we
know
it
is
a
tissue
of
compromises
between
these
two
opposing
images.
The
influence
of
the
mechanistic
image
is
clearest
in
the
metapsychology,
where
the
general
structure
of
the
major
propositions
as
well
as
a
good
deal
of
the
terminology
can
be
seen
to
derive
directly
from
the
explicitly
mechanistic
and
reductionistic
model
of
the
“Project.”
The
most
striking
change
was
Freud’s
abandoning
an
anatomical-­‐neurological
framework
for
the
abstract
ambiguity
of
the
“psychic
apparatus,”
in
which
the
structures
and
energies
are
psychic,
not
physical.
Unwittingly,
Freud
took
a
plunge
into
Cartesian
metaphysical
dualism,
but
staved
off
what
he
felt
was
the
antiscientific
threat
of
the
humanistic
image
by
continuing
to
claim
ultimate
explanatory
power
for
metapsychology
as
opposed
to
the
theoretically
less
ambitious
formulation
of
clinical
observations
in
language
that
was
closer
to
that
of
everyday
life.
And
in
the
metapsychology,
by
using
the
trick
of
translating
subjective
longings
into
the
terminology
of
forces
and
energies,
Freud
did
not
have
to
take
the
behavioristic
tack
of
rejecting
the
inner
world;
by
replacing
the
subjective,
willing
self
with
the
ego
defined
as
a
psychic
structure,
he
was
able
to
allow
enough
autonomy
to
achieve
a
fair
fit
with
clinical
observation.
Without
realizing
it,
therefore,
Freud
did
not
give
up
the
passive
reflex
model
of
the
organism
and
the
closely
related
physicalistic
concept
of
reality
even
when
he
put
aside
deliberate
neuropsychologizing.
Although
he
explicitly
postponed
any
attempt
to
relate
the
terms
of
metapsychology
to
processes
and
places
in
the
body,
he
substituted
psychological

30. theories
that
carry
the
same
burden
of
outmoded
assumptions.
The
relation
between
the
humanistic
image
and
Naturphilosophie
remains
to
be
clarified.
In
one
sense,
the
latter
can
be
considered
a
part
of
the
former;
yet
in
a
number
of
respects
it
has
a
special
status.
I
think
of
it
as
a
peculiarly
European
intellectual
anomaly,
naturally
related
to
its
matrix
of
early
nineteenth-­‐century
ideas
and
already
anachronistic
by
Freud’s
time.
Where
the
modern
temper
(even
in
history
and
the
other
social
sciences)
looks
for
detailed,
prosaic
chains
and
networks
of
demonstrable
causes,
the
intellectuals
of
that
era
saw
nothing
wrong
with
postulating
a
conceptual
shortcut,
an
ad
hoc
“force”
or
“essence”
or
another
theoretical
deus
ex
machina
to
which
an
observed
outcome
was
directly
attributed.
Loose
analogies
were
readily
accepted
as
adequate
means
of
forming
hypotheses
(usually
genetic),
and
hardly
anyone
grasped
the
distinction
between
generating
a
plausible
bright
idea
and
reaching
a
defensible
conclusion.
To
this
temper,
audacity
was
more
to
be
admired
than
caution.
A
brilliantly
unexpected
linkage
of
events
or
phenomena
was
a
better
achievement
than
a
laboriously
nailed-­‐down
conclusion.
Thus,
the
grand
sweep
of
Darwin’s
ideas
caught
the
public
fancy,
preconditioned
as
it
was
by
a
legacy
of
Naturphilosophie,
much
more
than
his
extraordinary
assemblage
of
detailed
empirical
evidence.
Darwin
did
not
introduce
the
idea
of
evolution;
his
contribution
was
to
work
out
in
convincing
detail
a
nonteleological
mechanism
by
which
the
gradual
origin
of
species
could
be
accounted
for.
It
was
an
irony
indeed
that
his
great
book
seemed
in
the
popular
mind
a
confirmation
of
the
teleological,
even
animistic,
notions
of
Naturphilosophie,
though
there
have
been
many
such
events
in
the
history
of
science.
Perhaps
the
majority
of
people
approach
new
ideas
“assimilatively"
(to
use
Piaget’s
term),
reducing
them
to
their
nearest
equivalent
in
the
stock
of
already
existing
concepts,
so
that
a
revolutionary

31. proposal
may
end
up
reinforcing
a
reactionary
idea.
One
might
even
argue
that
in
the
world
of
today,
the
main
function
of
grand,
integrative
speculations—philosophical
or
pseudoscientific
‘
‘theories
of
the
universe”—is
to
help
adolescents
gain
a
temporary
intellectual
mastery
of
the
confusion
they
experience
upon
the
sudden
widening
of
their
horizons,
both
emotional
and
ideational.
In
a
sense,
Freud
the
medical
student
was
quite
justified
in
feeling
that
his
Nature-­‐philosophical
leanings
were
among
the
childish
things
that
a
man
had
to
put
away.
Jones
(1953,
p.
29)
writes
that
when
he
once
asked
Freud
how
much
philosophy
he
had
read,
the
answer
came:
“Very
little.
As
a
young
man
I
felt
a
strong
attraction
towards
speculation
and
ruthlessly
checked
it.”
On
the
basis
of
this
and
many
relevant
remarks
and
passages,
I
have
summarized
(see
table)
the
aspects
of
Freud's
thought
that
seem
traceable
to
Naturphilosophie
and
to
his
philosophical
studies
with
Brentano,
along
with
their
counterparts,
drawn
from
the
tradition
of
mechanistic
science
and
in
particular
from
Freud’s
own
apprenticeship
in
physicalistic
physiology.
To
an
unknown
extent,
some
items
on
the
left
may
have
derived
from
other
humanistic
sources,
but
this
one
seems
most
plausible.
(Evidence
that
the
various
elements
were
associated
in
the
manner
indicated
is
presented
in
Holt,
1963.)
Freud
usually
spoke
slightingly
about
all
of
the
methods
and
procedures
of
the
formal
disciplines,
as
in
the
quotation
above,
where
it
is
noteworthy
(and
characteristic)
that
he
equated
philosophy
and
speculation.
Deduction,
comprehensiveness
of
a
theory’s
coverage,
and
rigorous
definition
were
associated
in
his
mind
with
the
sterile,
formalistic
aspects
of

32. Table
1:
Latent
Structure
of
Freud's
Methodological
Conceptions
Derived
largely
from
philosophy,
especially
Naturphilosophie:
Derived
largely
from
physicalistic
physiology:
Associated
disciplines:
Philosophy;
academic
philosophical
psychology
Physiology;
neuropsychology;
metapsychology
Nature
of
theorizing:
Complete,
comprehensive
theories,
with
precise
definitions
of
concepts
Partial,
ad
hoc
theories
with
groping
imprecisely
defined
concepts
Procedures
and
methods:
Deductive
procedure,
use
of
mathematics;
speculation;
synthesis
Inductive
procedure
(nonformalistic);
observation;
dissection;
analysis
philosophy.
And
yet
(perhaps
because
of
the
bridge-­‐concept
of
evolution),
Naturphilosophie
and
the
rest
of
this
complex
of
ideas
were
linked
in
Freud’s
mind
with
Darwinian
biology
and
to
the
similarly
genetic
discipline
of
archaeology.
These
respectable
sciences
which,
unlike
philosophy
and
mathematics,
were
concretely
empirical,
reconstructed
the
remote
past
of
man
by
a
genetic
method.
Perhaps
the
thought
that
he
was
following
their
method
enabled
Freud,
finally,
to
indulge
his
long-­‐suppressed
yearning
for
broad,
speculative
theorizing.
In
his
autobiography
(Freud,
1925,
p.
57),
he
wrote:
“In
the
works
of
my
later
years
(Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle,
Group
Psychology
and
the
Analysis
of
the
Ego,
and
The
Ego
and
the
Id),
I
have
given
free
rein
to
the
inclination,
which
I
kept
down
for
so
long,
to
speculation....”
In
a
sense,
of
course,
it
is
only
an
extension
of
the
method
of
genetic
reconstruction
to
go
back
beyond
the
beginnings
of
an
individual
life
and
attempt
to
trace
the
development
of
socially
shared
customs
in
the
larger
life
history
of
a
people,
as
Freud
did
in
Totem
and

33. Taboo.
The
conceptions
of
Haeckel
(that
ontogeny
recapitulates
phylogeny)
and
of
Lamarck
(that
acquired
characteristics
may
be
passed
on
genetically)
were
generally
known
during
Freud’s
scientifically
formative
years
and
enjoyed
a
far
more
widespread
acceptance
by
the
scientific
world
than
they
did
during
Freud’s
later
years.
This
acceptance
made
it
difficult
for
him
to
give
them
up.
If
the
functional
anthropologists
had
appeared
a
generation
sooner
and
if
the
evolutionary
approach
had
not
been
so
popularized
by
Sir
James
Frazer,
Freud
might
have
been
able
to
understand
how
pervasive
and
unconscious
the
patterning
of
a
culture
can
be.
This
intricate
interconnection
makes
it
possible
for
culture
to
be
transmitted
via
subtle
and
almost
imperceptible
kinds
of
learning,
a
fact
that
obviates
what
Freud
(1934—38)
declared
was
the
necessity
that
a
social
psychology
should
postulate
the
inheritance
of
acquired
characteristics.

34. Freud’s
Cognitive
Style
Let
us
turn
now
to
the
last
major
source
of
difficulty
the
modern
reader
encounters
in
understanding
Freud:
his
cognitive
style.
Anyone
who
has
read
Freud
at
all
may
react
to
that
proposition
with
astonishment,
for
Freud’s
style
is
much
admired
for
its
limpid
clarity.
Even
in
translation,
Freud
is
vivid,
personal,
and
charmingly
direct
in
a
way
that
makes
him
highly
readable;
he
uses
imaginative
and
original
figures
of
speech,
and
often
leads
the
reader
along
by
a
kind
of
stepwise
development
that
enables
him
to
penetrate
into
difficult
or
touchy
areas
with
a
minimum
of
effort.
Anyone
who
has
read
much
of
his
writing
can
easily
understand
why
he
received
the
Goethe
prize
for
literature.
Nevertheless,
there
are
stylistic
difficulties
in
understanding
him;
but
they
relate
to
his
cognitive,
not
his
literary
style.
A
couple
of
decades
ago
George
Klein
(1951,
1970)
coined
the
term
cognitive
style
to
mean
the
patterning
of
a
person’s
ways
of
taking
in,
processing,
and
communicating
information
about
his
world.
Freud
has
an
idiosyncratic
way
not
just
of
writing
but
of
thinking,
which
makes
it
surprisingly
easy
for
the
modern
reader
to
misinterpret
his
meaning,
to
miss
or
distort
many
subtleties
of
his
thought.
To
some
degree,
I
myself
may
be
subtly
distorting
Klein’s
concept,
for
he
operationalized
it
in
the
laboratory,
not
the
library.
He
presented
subjects
with
hidden
figures
to
be
extracted
from
camouflage,
series
of
squares
to
be
judged
for
size,
and
other
unusual
tasks,
some
of
his
own
and
some
of
others’
devising.
By
contrast,
the
methods
I
have
used
are
more
like
those
of
the
literary
critic.
I
have
collected
notes
on
what
struck
me
as
characteristic
ways
in

35. which
Freud
observed,
processed
data,
obtained
ideas
by
means
other
than
direct
observation,
thought
about
them,
and
put
his
personal
stamp
on
them.
In
doing
so,
however,
I
have
been
guided
by
my
long
association
with
Klein
and
his
own
way
of
approaching
cognitive
processes
and
products;
so
I
trust
that
I
have
been
true
to
the
spirit
of
his
contribution,
which
is
now
so
widely
used
as
to
be
virtually
a
part
of
psychology's
common
property.
CHARACTER
STYLE
Perhaps
as
good
a
place
to
start
as
any
is
with
Ernest
Jones’s
well-­‐known
biography.
Much
of
the
little
that
he
has
to
say
on
this
topic
can
be
organized
in
the
form
of
antitheses
or
paradoxes.
First
of
all,
there
was
a
great
deal
about
Freud
that
was
compulsively
orderly
and
hard-­‐working.
He
led
a
stable,
regular
life
in
which
his
work
was
a
basic
necessity.
As
he
wrote
to
Pfister:
“I
could
not
contemplate
with
any
sort
of
comfort
a
life
without
work.
Creative
imagination
and
work
go
together
with
me;
I
take
no
delight
in
anything
else.”
Yet
he
went
on,
“That
would
be
a
prescription
for
happiness
were
it
not
for
the
terrible
thought
that
one’s
productivity
depends
entirely
on
sensitive
moods”
(Jones,
1955,
p.
396f.).
As
Jones
brings
out,
he
did
indeed
work
by
fits
and
starts,
not
quite
so
steadily
and
regularly
as,
say,
Virgil,
but
when
the
mood
was
on
him.
Again,
Jones
remarks
on
“Freud’s
close
attention
to
verbal
detail,
the
striking
patience
with
which
he
would
unravel
the
meaning
of
phrases
and
utterances”
(ibid.,
p.
398).
On
the
other
hand:
His
translators
will
bear
me
out
when
I
remark
that
minor
obscurities
and
ambiguities,
of
a
kind
that
more
scrupulous
circumspection
could
have
readily
avoided,
are
not
the
least
of
their
trials.
He
was
of
course
aware
of
this.
I
remember
once
asking
him
why
he

36. used
a
certain
phrase,
the
meaning
of
which
was
not
clear,
and
with
a
grimace
he
answered:
“Pure
Schlamperei"
(sloppiness)
(1953,
p.
33f.).
He
was
himself
not
a
meticulous
translator,
though
a
highly
gifted
one.
“Instead
of
laboriously
transcribing
from
the
foreign
language,
idioms
and
all,
he
would
read
a
passage,
close
the
book,
and
consider
how
a
German
writer
would
have
clothed
the
same
thoughts
…
His
translating
work
was
both
brilliant
and
rapid”
(Jones,
1953,
p.
55).
Similarly,
Jones
remarks
on
Freud’s
“quickness
of
thought
and
observation”
generally,
and
the
fact
that
“His
type
of
mind
was
such
as
to
penetrate
through
the
material
to
something
really
essential
beyond
rather
than
to
dally
or
play
with
it”
(1955,
p.
399).
In
short,
he
was
intuitive
rather
than
ploddingly
systematic.
This
particular
paradox
can
be
resolved,
I
believe,
by
the
recognition
that
Freud
was,
basically,
an
obsessive-­‐compulsive
personality,
in
which
this
type
of
ambivalence
is
familiar.
He
had
a
good
measure
of
the
fundamental
anal
traits
of
orderliness
and
compulsive
attention
to
detail;
yet
when
it
came
to
his
mode
of
working
with
such
details
as
the
slightest
turn
of
phrase
in
the
telling
of
a
dream
(which
only
a
compulsive
would
have
noticed
in
the
first
place),
he
showed
a
gift
for
intuition.
After
all,
as
Jones
never
tires
of
reminding
us,
he
was
a
genius,
a
man
of
extraordinary
intelligence.
NATURE
OF
FREUD'S
INTELLECT
What
kind
of
intelligence
was
it,
then?
If
we
adopt
the
frame
of
reference
of
the
Wechsler
intelligence
tests,
it
was
first
of
all
predominantly
a
verbal
rather
than
a
performance
sort
of
ability.
I
have
seen
no
evidence
that
Freud
was
specially
gifted
with
his
hands.
He
failed
as
a
chemical
experimenter
(Jones,
1953,
p.
54),
and
though
he
was
a
good

37. microscopist
and
invented
a
new
tissue
stain
during
his
years
of
scientific
apprenticeship
in
Brücke’s
physiological
laboratory,
there
is
no
evidence
that
he
was
skilled
at
the
mechanical
end
of
it.
He
was
never
what
we
call
“an
apparatus
man,”
an
ingenious
tinkerer.4
Incidentally,
the
usual
implication
of
a
markedly
higher
verbal
over
performance
10
would
be
borne
out
in
Freud’s
case:
he
was
surely
never
given
to
acting
out,
but
was
always
an
intellectualizer
and
internalizer.
Moreover,
“That
there
was
a
pronounced
passive
side
to
Freud’s
nature
is
a
conclusion
for
which
there
is
ample
evidence.”
Jones
(1953,
p.
53)
notes;
“He
once
remarked
that
there
were
three
things
to
which
he
felt
unequal:
governing,
curing,
and
educating.”
He
gave
up
hypnosis
as
“a
coarsely
interfering
method”
and
soon
abjured
the
laying
on
of
hands
despite
the
fact
that
he
treated
several
of
the
ladies
in
Studies
in
Hysteria
by
physical
massage.
Sitting
quietly
and
listening
to
free
associations,
responding
only
verbally
(largely
by
interpretations),
is
the
method
par
excellence
of
a
man
with
verbal
gifts
and
a
disinclination
to
manipulate.
Within
the
realm
of
verbal
intelligence,
we
can
make
some
more
specific
statements
as
well.
“He
had
an
enormously
rich
vocabulary,”
Jones
(1955,
p.
402)
attests,
“but
he
was
the
reverse
of
a
pedant
in
words.’’
He
knew
eight
languages,
having
enough
mastery
of
English
and
French
to
write
scientific
papers
in
those
tongues.
There
is
a
fair
amount
of
evidence
between
the
lines
of
Freud’s
writings
that
the
modality
of
his
thought
was
largely
verbal,
as
4
"As
a
young
doctor
I
worked
for
a
long
time
at
the
Chemical
Institute
without
ever
becoming
proficient
in
the
skills
which
that
science
demands;
and
for
that
reason
in
my
waking
life
I
have
never
liked
thinking
of
this
barren
and
indeed
humiliating
episode
in
my
apprenticeship.
On
the
other
hand
I
have
a
regularly
recurring
dream
of
working
in
the
laboratory,
of
carrying
out
analyses
and
of
having
various
experiences
there.
These
dreams
are
disagreeable
in
the
same
way
as
examination
dreams
and
they
are
never
very
distinct.
While
I
was
interpreting
one
of
them,
my
attention
was
eventually
attracted
by
the
word
'analysis'.
which
gave
me
a
key
to
their
understanding.
Since
those
days
I
have
become
an
‘analyst’,
and
I
now
carry
out
analyses
which
are
very
highly
spoken
of
..
."
(1900,
p.
475)

38. opposed
to
imageless,
visual,
auditory,
or
kinesthetic.
He
gives
evidence
that
he
had
been
a
virtual
Eidetiker
until
well
into
his
schooling,
however:
...
for
a
short
period
of
my
youth
some
unusual
feats
of
memory
were
not
beyond
me.
When
I
was
a
schoolboy
I
took
it
as
a
matter
of
course
that
I
could
repeat
by
heart
the
page
I
had
been
reading;
and
shortly
before
I
entered
the
University
I
could
write
down
almost
verbatim
popular
lectures
on
scientific
subjects
directly
after
hearing
them.
(1901,
p.
135)
His
auditory
imagery
could
be
extraordinarily
vivid,
too,
at
least
up
until
a
few
years
later,
when
he
was
studying
with
Charcot
in
Paris.
During
these
days,
he
reports,
“I
quite
often
heard
my
name
suddenly
called
by
an
unmistakable
and
beloved
voice,’’
which
he
goes
on
to
refer
to
unblinkingly
as
a
“hallucination’’
(1901,
p.
261).
Yet
he
writes
about
these
experiences
in
such
a
way
as
to
indicate
that,
like
most
other
eidetic
imagers,
he
gradually
lost
the
ability
as
he
grew
older.
True,
his
dreams
remained
vividly
visual,
and
he
occasionally
was
able
to
get
a
sharp
visual
image
in
waking
life,
but
he
emphasized
that
such
occasions
were
exceptional.
On
the
other
hand,
I
have
never
found
any
indication
that
Freud
was
even
aware
that
such
a
phenomenon
as
imageless
thought
exists;
though
investigators
from
Galton
to
Anne
Roe
have
found
that
it
characterizes
many
leading
figures
in
such
disciplines
as
mathematics
and
theoretical
physics—disciplines
that
Jones
specifically
says
(1953,
p.
33)
Freud
could
never
have
excelled
in.
Perhaps
there
is
a
hint
here
that
Freud’s
mind
was
not
at
the
very
forefront
as
far
as
highly
abstract
thinking
is
concerned.
Surely
he
was
not
much
of
a
mathematician.
He
once
characterized
himself
as
follows:
I
have
very
restricted
capacities
or
talents.
None
at
all
for
the
natural
sciences;
nothing
for
mathematics;
nothing
for
anything
quantitative.
But
what
I
have,
of
a
very
restricted

39. nature,
was
probably
very
intensive.
(Quoted
in
Jones,
1955,
p.
397)
As
we
shall
see
a
little
later,
this
relative
weakness
in
the
quantitative
factor
had
a
number
of
noticeable
effects
on
Freud’s
manner
of
thinking.
To
summarize
so
far,
in
terms
of
abilities,
Freud
had
a
predominantly
verbal
intelligence
and
mode
of
thinking.
He
was
extraordinarily
gifted
at
memory,
concentration,
passive
(or
as
he
put
it,
“evenly-­‐suspended”)
attention,
and
creative
concept-­‐formation.
His
gift
was
more
analytic
than
synthetic,
just
as
his
preference
was
for
the
former
over
the
latter
aspect
of
thinking.
He
had
no
notable
gifts
along
sensorimotor,
manipulative,
or
quantitative
lines,
nor
in
the
most
abstract
types
of
thought.
Above
all,
it
may
not
be
superfluous
to
add,
he
was
productive,
original,
and
creative.
SELF-­‐CRITICAL
DOUBTS
VERSUS
SELF-­‐CONFIDENT
DETERMINATION
In
moving
on
to
some
more
stylistic
aspects
of
his
thought,
I
shall
continue
to
pursue
antitheses.
One
such
is
the
cognitive
side
of
a
prominent
theme
in
Freud’s
personality:
a
self-­‐critical,
even
retiring
and
self-­‐doubting
modesty
versus
a
largely
covert
and
negated
thirst
for
fame
coupled
with
great
self-­‐confidence.
A
number
of
the
quotations
both
from
Freud
and
from
Jones
have
touched
on
his
self-­‐critical
side,
and
the
evidence
for
his
deep-­‐
seated
longing
to
see
his
name
carved
on
a
rock
for
the
ages
is
omnipresent
in
Jones’s
three
volumes,
though
the
disciple
outdid
the
master
in
protesting
that
it
wasn’t
so.
Both
of
these
facets
of
Freud’s
mind
come
out
in
relation
to
the
ideas
he
set
forth
in
Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle.
He
wrote:
What
follows
is
speculation,
often
far-­‐fetched
speculation,
which
the
reader
will
consider
or
dismiss
according
to
his
individual
predilection.
(1920,
p.
24)

40. And:
It
may
be
asked
whether
and
how
far
I
am
myself
convinced
of
the
truth
of
the
hypotheses
that
have
been
set
out
in
these
pages.
My
answer
would
be
that
I
am
not
convinced
myself
and
that
I
do
not
seek
to
persuade
other
people
to
believe
in
them.
Or,
more
precisely,
that
I
do
not
know
how
far
I
believe
in
them....
Since
we
have
such
good
grounds
for
being
distrustful,
our
attitude
towards
the
results
of
our
own
deliberations
cannot
well
be
other
than
one
of
cool
benevolence.
(1920,
p.
59)
He
was
speaking,
of
course,
about
his
most
controversial
speculations,
those
concerning
the
death
instinct.
Yet
only
a
few
years
later,
he
wrote
this:
To
begin
with
it
was
only
tentatively
that
I
put
forward
the
views
I
have
developed
here,
but
in
the
course
of
time
they
have
gained
such
a
hold
upon
me
that
I
can
no
longer
think
in
any
other
way.
To
my
mind,
they
are
far
more
serviceable
from
a
theoretical
standpoint
than
any
other
possible
ones;
they
provide
that
simplification,
without
either
ignoring
or
doing
violence
to
the
facts,
for
which
we
strive
in
scientific
work.
(1930,
p.
119)
In
short,
he
had
a
tendency
to
become
so
“accustomed
to
the
face”
of
his
own
ideas
as
to
consider
them
indispensable
and,
finally,
as
established,
even
though
they
were
originally
presented
with
great
modesty.
Indeed,
he
looked
back
on
the
shaky
speculations
of
Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle
as
a
basis
for
supporting
his
fundamental
assumption
that
there
had
to
be
two
classes
of
instinctual
drives:
Over
and
over
again
we
find,
when
we
are
able
to
trace
instinctual
impulses
back,
that
they
reveal
themselves
as
derivatives
of
Eros.
If
it
were
not
for
the
considerations
put
forward
in
Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle,
and
ultimately
for
the
sadistic
constituents
which
have
attached
themselves
to
Eros,
we
should
have
difficulty
in
holding
to
our
fundamental
dualistic
point
of
view
[in
instinct
theory).
(1923,
p.
46)
Here
we
have
the
first
hint
of
one
of
the
basic
problems
with
which
Freud
struggled,

41. and
which
helped
shape
the
nature
of
his
thought.
Working
as
he
did
in
a
new
field,
with
no
conventional
criteria
for
establishing
valid
knowledge,
he
had
to
be
sustained
against
the
inevitable
self-­‐doubts,
even
the
despair
that
what
he
was
doing
could
lead
anywhere,
by
an
irrational
confidence
in
himself,
a
faith
that
his
intuitions
and
hypotheses
would
be
vindicated,
and
even
a
certain
degree
of
self-­‐deception
that
he
had
established
points
more
firmly
than
he
in
fact
had
been
able
to
do.
His
determination
to
persist
in
the
face
of
his
recognition
that
progress
was
difficult
is
well
expressed
in
the
following
quotation:
It
is
almost
humiliating
that,
after
working
so
long,
we
should
still
be
having
difficulty
in
understanding
the
most
fundamental
facts.
But
we
have
made
up
our
minds
to
simplify
nothing
and
to
hide
nothing.
If
we
cannot
see
things
clearly
we
will
at
least
see
clearly
what
the
obscurities
are.
(1926a,
p.
124)
One
of
the
positive
aspects
of
Freud’s
ability
to
be
self-­‐critical
was
his
willingness
to
change
his
ideas:
We
must
be
patient
and
await
fresh
methods
and
occasions
of
research.
We
must
be
ready,
too,
to
abandon
a
path
that
we
have
followed
for
a
time,
if
it
seems
to
be
leading
to
no
good
end.
Only
believers,
who
demand
that
science
shall
be
a
substitute
for
the
catechism
they
have
given
up,
will
blame
an
investigator
for
developing
or
even
transforming
his
views.
(1920,
p.
64)
If
he
was
not
always
able
to
live
up
to
this
brave
program,
if
he
failed
to
recognize
that
many
of
his
unquestioned
assumptions
were
not
as
axiomatically
true
as
he
thought,
these
are
the
necessary
consequences
of
being
human.
Freud
was
surely
sustained
in
his
long
quest
by
a
passionate
interest
in
penetrating
the
mysteries
of
nature
and
a
capacity
to
care
deeply
about
his
ideas.
All
the
more
natural,
therefore,
that
he
should
have
tended
at
times

42. to
lose
scientific
detachment
and
confuse
his
concepts
with
realities.
Thus,
he
would
refer
to
“the
‘super-­‐ego,’
one
of
the
later
findings
of
psychoanalysis”
(1900,
p.
558
n.
1),
or
to
“the
discovery
that
the
ego
itself
is
cathected
with
libido”
(1930,
p.
118;
emphasis
added
in
both
quotations).
When
I
spoke
above
about
his
unquestioned
assumptions,
I
had
principally
in
mind
the
passive
reflex
model
of
the
organism,
which
is
today
demonstrably
false
(Holt,
1965).
Yet
to
Freud
it
seemed
so
self-­‐evidently
true
that
he
referred
to
it
as
a
fact
on
which
he
could
found
one
of
his
most
questionable
constructs:
The
dominating
tendency
of
mental
life,
and
perhaps
of
nervous
life
in
general,
is
the
effort
to
reduce,
to
keep
constant
or
to
remove
internal
tension
due
to
stimuli
.
.
.—a
tendency
which
finds
expression
in
the
pleasure
principle;
and
our
recognition
of
that
fact
is
one
of
our
strongest
reasons
for
believing
in
the
existence
of
death
instincts.
(1920,
p.
55f.;
emphasis
added)
Another
aspect
of
this
same
antithesis
was
Freud’s
conviction
that
the
essence
of
what
he
was
setting
forth
was
truth,
which
would
be
fully
appreciated
only
by
future
generations,
versus
his
expectation
that
much
of
what
he
taught
would
be
quickly
overthrown,
as
in
the
following
1909
letter
to
Jung
in
response
to
the
latter’s
expressed
fear
that
Freud’s
writings
would
be
treated
as
gospel:
Your
surmise
that
after
my
departure
my
errors
might
be
adored
as
holy
relics
amused
me
enormously,
but
I
don’t
believe
it.
On
the
contrary,
I
think
my
followers
will
hasten
to
demolish
as
swiftly
as
possible
everything
that
is
not
safe
and
sound
in
what
I
leave
behind.
(Quoted
in
Jones,
1955,
p.
446)
Freud
showed
here
the
strength
of
his
faith
that
there
were
kernels
of
eternal
truth
as
well
as
chaff
in
the
harvest
of
his
labors.

43. ANALYSIS
VERSUS
SYNTHESIS
Another
familiar
antithesis
in
the
realm
of
thinking
is
analysis
versus
synthesis.
Here,
the
preference
of
the
inventor
and
namer
of
psychoanalysis
was
clear
and
marked.
In
1915
he
wrote
to
Lou
Andreas-­‐Salome:
I
so
rarely
feel
the
need
for
synthesis.
The
unity
of
this
world
seems
to
me
something
self-­‐understood,
something
unworthy
of
emphasis.
What
interests
me
is
the
separation
and
breaking
up
into
its
component
parts
what
would
otherwise
flow
together
into
a
primeval
pulp.
.
.
.In
short,
I
am
evidently
an
analyst
and
believe
that
synthesis
offers
no
obstacles
once
analysis
has
been
achieved.(1960,
p.
310)
Yet
in
spite
of
the
fact
that
the
concept
of
the
synthetic
function
of
the
ego
is
associated
less
with
Freud
than
with
Nunberg,
the
latter’s
paper
by
this
name
(Nunberg,
1931)
is
in
large
part
simply
a
drawing
together
of
points
Freud
made
in
passing
in
many
contexts.
Freud
could
perform
remarkable
feats
of
synthesizing
many
disconnected
facts—see
for
example
his
masterly
review
of
the
scientific
literature
on
dreams
(1900,
Ch.
1)—and
he
taught
us
a
great
deal
about
synthetic
functioning;
nevertheless,
his
ability
and
his
predilection
ran
predominantly
along
the
lines
of
analysis.
DIALECTIC
DUALISM
One
reason
I
have
adopted
the
antithetical
method
in
this
exposition
is
that
a
preference
for
opposed
binary
concepts
was
itself
highly
characteristic
of
Freud’s
thinking.
Even
in
the
realm
of
art,
he
strongly
preferred
the
balance
of
classical
antiquity;
a
letter
to
Romain
Rolland
in
1930
speaks
of
his
“Hellenic
love
of
proportion’’
(1960,
p.
392).
And
in
his
own
theory,
it
is
surely
a
striking
and
well-­‐known
fact
that
his
major
concepts
come
in
matched
opposing
pairs.
Perhaps
the
most
notable
is
his
motivational
theory
in
its
various

44. guises.
Fairly
early,
he
pitted
unconscious
wish
against
preconscious
cathexis,
then
the
libidinal
versus
the
ego-­‐instincts,
going
on
to
narcissistic
versus
object-­‐libido,
to
Eros
versus
the
death
instincts
(or
love
against
hate);
but
it
was
always
a
dual
drive
theory.
Or
recall
“the
three
great
polarities
that
dominate
mental
life”:
activity—passivity,
ego—
external
world,
and
pleasure—unpleasure
(1915a,
p.
140;
emphasis
Freud’s),
to
which
might
be
added
that
of
masculine—feminine.
Many
other
such
oppositions
come
to
mind:
quantity
versus
quality,
autoplastic
versus
alloplastic,
ego-­‐syntonic
versus
ego-­‐alien,
pleasure
principle
versus
reality
principle,
free
versus
bound
cathexis,
and
the
primary
process
versus
the
secondary
process.
It
is
not
difficult
to
show
that
Freud
conceived
of
a
continuous
series
of
actual
thought
processes
between
the
theoretical
extremes
of
the
primary
and
the
secondary
process,
but
he
typically
used
them
in
a
dichotomous
fashion.
Even
when
he
proposed
triads
of
concepts
(Cs.,
Pcs.,
and
Ucs.;
ego,
superego,
and
id),
he
had
a
strong
tendency
to
reduce
them
to
binary
form.
The
1923
work
is,
after
all,
entitled
merely
The
Ego
and
the
Id;
and
the
distinction
between
conscious
and
unconscious
always
impressed
Freud
as
“our
one
beacon-­‐light
in
the
darkness
of
depth-­‐psychology”
(1923,
p.
18).
Terms
like
ambivalence
and
conflict
conceptualize
this
trait
as
fundamental
facts
of
psychology.
Indeed,
one
might
argue
that
many
of
the
antithetical
dynamic
concepts
are
a
direct
consequence
of
Freud’s
recognizing
how
important
conflict
was
in
both
normal
and
pathological
development.
TOLERATED
CONTRADICTION
(SYNTHESIS
DEFERRED)
Further,
Freud’s
thinking
is
characterized
by
an
unusual
tolerance
for
inconsistency.
If
you
went
through
the
works
of
any
author
as
prolific
as
Freud,
you
would
doubtless
find
many
mutually
contradictory
statements,
and
many
propositions
that
are
actually

45. incompatible
with
his
basic
assumptions.
But
it
is
not
difficult
to
find
other
reasons
for
the
presence
of
inconsistencies
in
Freud’s
work
besides
its
sheer
bulk,
which
is
enormous:
his
preference
for
what
I
shall
expound
shortly
as
seriatim
theorizing
and
piecemeal
empiricism,
both
of
which
are
clearly
to
be
expected
from
a
man
with
an
orientation
away
from
synthesis,
and
a
confessed
sloppiness
with
concepts.
As
Jones
puts
it,
He
wrote
easily,
fluently,
and
spontaneously,
and
would
have
found
much
rewriting
irksome.
.
.
.one
of
his
main
characteristics
[was]
his
dislike
of
being
hampered
or
fettered.
He
loved
to
give
himself
up
to
his
thoughts
freely,
to
see
where
they
would
take
him,
leaving
aside
for
the
moment
any
question
of
precise
delineation;
that
could
be
left
for
further
consideration.
(1953,
p.
33f.)
True,
he
did
rewrite
and
revise
several
of
his
books
many
times.
Fortunately,
the
Standard
Edition
provides
a
variorum
text
and
scrupulously
informs
us
of
every
change,
edition
by
edition.
It
is
not
difficult,
therefore,
to
characterize
Freud's
style
of
revision
by
studying
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams,
The
Psychopathology
of
Everyday
Life,
and
Three
Essays
on
the
Theory
of
Sexuality.
These
books,
first
published
from
1900
to
1905,
went
through
eight,
ten,
and
six
editions
respectively,
all
of
them
containing
additions
from
at
least
as
late
as
1925.
Thus,
they
span
at
least
two
major
periods
in
the
development
of
Freud's
thought,
including
a
far-­‐reaching
change
in
models.
Yet
one
statement
covers
the
vast
majority
of
the
revisions:
he
added
things.
There
was
never
any
fundamental
reconsideration
and
precious
little
synthesis.
Perhaps
if
Freud
had
not
had
such
a
superb
command
of
written
communication
so
that
he
rarely
had
even
to
polish
his
first
drafts,
he
would
have
reworked
his
books
more
thoroughly
as
they
went
through
new
editions.
At
most,
he
added
an
occasional
footnote
pointing
out
the
incompatibility
of
a
statement
with
later
doctrines.
Even
Chapter
7
of
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams,
Freud’s
most
ambitious
and

46. important
theoretical
work,
was
left
virtually
untouched
except
for
interpolations,
after
the
tinkerings
of
1915
and
1917
that
undid
the
possibility
of
topographical
regression,
even
after
the
jettisoning
of
the
whole
topographic
model
in
1923
and
its
replacement
by
the
structural
model,
which
makes
no
provision
for
the
conceptualization
of
any
complete
cognitive
process.
Indeed,
to
the
end.
Chapter
7
contained
anachronistic
carry-­‐overs
from
the
neurological
model
of
the
unpublished
“Project,”
which
had
preceded
it
by
four
years.
Throughout
all
the
revisions,
Freud
never
eliminated
the
lapses
into
references
to
“neurones,”
“pathways,”
and
“quantity.”
Freud
built
theory,
then,
much
as
Franklin
D.
Roosevelt
constructed
the
Executive
branch
of
the
government:
when
something
wasn’t
working
very
well,
he
seldom
reorganized;
he
just
supplied
another
agency—or
concept—to
do
the
job.
To
tolerate
this
much
inconsistency
surely
took
an
unusual
capacity
to
delay
the
time
when
the
gratification
of
an
orderly,
internally
consistent,
logically
coherent
theory
might
be
attained.
Compare
his
self-­‐characterization
in
the
following
letter
to
Andreas-­‐Salome
in
1917;
he
had
been
contrasting
himself
with
“the
system-­‐builders”
Jung
and
Adler.
.
.
.
you
have
observed
how
I
work,
step
by
step,
without
the
inner
need
for
completion,
continually
under
the
pressure
of
the
problems
immediately
on
hand
and
taking
infinite
pains
not
to
be
diverted
from
the
path.
(1960,
p.
319)
Seven
years
earlier,
he
had
written
to
Jung:
I
notice
that
you
have
the
same
way
of
working
as
I
have:
to
be
on
the
look
out
in
whatever
direction
you
feel
drawn
and
not
take
the
obvious
straightforward
path.
I
think
that
is
the
best
way
too,
since
one
is
astonished
later
to
find
how
directly
those
circuitous
routes
led
to
the
right
goal.
(Quoted
in
Jones,
1955,
p.
449)
To
follow
one’s
nose
empirically,
adding
to
the
theory
whatever
bits
and
pieces
might

47. accrue
along
the
way—this
was
the
procedure
with
which
Freud
felt
at
home,
with
his
faith
that
ultimately
the
truth
would
prevail.
CONCEPTION
OF
SCIENTIFIC
METHOD
AND
CONCEPTS
This
attitude
was
of
a
piece
with
Freud’s
basic
conception
of
scientific
work.
Science
was
first
and
foremost
a
matter
of
empirical
observation,
which
he
usually
contrasted
with
speculation
to
the
latter’s
discredit.
As
Freud
conceived
it,
a
speculative,
or
philosophical,
system
started
with
“clear
and
sharply
defined
basic
concepts,”
(1915a,
p.
117)
and
built
on
this
“smooth,
logically
unassailable
foundation”
(1914,
p.
77)
a
“complete
and
ready-­‐made
theoretical
structure,”
(1923,
p.
36)
which
could
“easily
spring
into
existence
complete,
and
thereafter
remain
unchangeable”
(1906,
p.
271).
But
“no
science,
not
even
the
most
exact,”
operates
this
way:
The
true
beginning
of
scientific
activity
consists
rather
in
describing
phenomena
and
then
in
proceeding
to
group,
classify
and
correlate
them.
Even
at
the
stage
of
description
it
is
not
possible
to
avoid
applying
certain
abstract
ideas
to
the
material
in
hand,
ideas
derived
from
somewhere
or
other
but
certainly
not
from
the
new
observations
alone.
.
.
.They
must
at
first
necessarily
possess
some
degree
of
indefiniteness;
.
.
.we
come
to
an
understanding
about
their
meaning
by
making
repeated
references
to
the
material
of
observation
from
which
they
appear
to
have
been
derived,
but
upon
which,
in
fact,
they
have
been
imposed.
.
.
.
It
is
only
after
more
thorough
investigation
of
the
field
of
observation
that
we
are
able
to
formulate
its
basic
scientific
concepts
with
increased
precision,
and
progressively
so
to
modify
them
that
they
become
serviceable
and
consistent
over
a
wide
area.
Then,
indeed,
the
time
may
have
come
to
confine
them
in
definitions.
The
advance
of
knowledge,
however,
does
not
tolerate
any
rigidity
even
in
definitions.
(1915a,
p.
117)
When
tackling
a
new
topic,
therefore:
Instead
of
starting
from
a
definition,
it
seems
more
useful
to
begin
with
some
indication

48. of
the
range
of
the
phenomena
under
review,
and
to
select
from
among
them
a
few
specially
striking
and
characteristic
facts
to
which
our
enquiry
can
be
attached.
(1921,
p.
72)
Thereafter,
any
psychoanalytic
inquiry
must
.
.
.find
its
way
step
by
step
along
the
path
towards
understanding
the
intricacies
of
the
mind
by
making
an
analytic
dissection
of
both
normal
and
abnormal
phenomena.
(1923.
p.
36)
But
because
of
the
complexity
of
its
subject
matter,
psychoanalysis
cannot
hope
for
quick
successes:
The
extraordinary
intricacy
of
all
the
factors
to
be
taken
into
consideration
leaves
only
one
way
of
presenting
them
open
to
us.
We
must
select
first
one
and
then
another
point
of
view,
and
follow
it
up
through
the
material
as
long
as
the
application
of
it
seems
to
yield
results.
Each
separate
treatment
of
the
subject
will
be
incomplete
in
itself,
and
there
cannot
fail
to
be
obscurities
where
it
touches
upon
material
that
has
not
yet
been
treated;
but
we
may
hope
that
a
final
synthesis
will
lead
to
a
proper
understanding.
(1915b,
p.
157f.)
The
truth,
when
attained,
will
be
simpler:
...
we
have
no
other
aim
but
that
of
translating
into
theory
the
results
of
observation,
and
we
deny
that
there
is
any
obligation
on
us
to
achieve
at
our
first
attempt
a
well-­‐
rounded
theory
which
will
commend
itself
by
its
simplicity.
We
shall
defend
the
complications
of
our
theory
so
long
as
we
find
that
they
meet
the
results
of
observation,
and
we
shall
not
abandon
our
expectations
of
being
led
in
the
end
by
those
very
complications
to
the
discovery
of
a
state
of
affairs
which,
while
simple
in
itself,
can
account
for
all
the
complications
of
reality.
(1915c,
p.
190)
Freud
thus
demonstrated
a
capacity
to
tolerate,
in
addition
to
inconsistency
and
delay,
considerable
conceptual
indefiniteness
or,
in
the
terminology
of
today,
ambiguity.
“It
is
true,”
he
was
ready
to
admit,
“that
notions
such
as
that
of
an
ego-­‐libido,
an
energy
of
the

49. ego-­‐instincts,
and
so
on,
are
neither
particularly
easy
to
grasp,
nor
sufficiently
rich
in
content.”
Nevertheless,
psychoanalysis
would
“gladly
content
itself
with
nebulous,
scarcely
imaginable
basic
concepts,
which
it
hopes
to
apprehend
more
clearly
in
the
course
of
its
development,
or
which
it
is
even
prepared
to
replace
by
others”
(1914,
p.
77).
Note
the
obligation
stated
here,
which
follows
clearly
enough
from
his
position
regarding
definition,
for
a
periodic
conceptual
stocktaking;
if
consistent
and
useful
definitions
never
precipitate
out,
the
concept
should
be
abandoned.
As
we
have
seen,
however,
such
a
process
of
regular
review
was
quite
incompatible
with
Freud’s
style
of
working
and
thinking,
and
he
rarely
discarded
concepts
when
he
added
new
ones.
It
is
a
little
sad,
but
not
surprising,
to
find
that
instincts,
which
in
1915
(1915a,
p.
117f.)
were
“at
the
moment
.
.
.
still
somewhat
obscure,”
were
characterized
18
years
later
as
“mythical
entities,
magnificent
in
their
indefiniteness”
(1933,
p.
95).
A
few
years
ago,
I
decided
to
try
my
hand
at
this
winnowing
process,
taking
one
of
Freud’s
central
but
tantalizingly
ill-­‐defined
concepts
(the
binding
of
cathexis;
see
Holt,
1962)
and
following
it
through
his
writings
to
see
what
kind
of
definition
emerged.
The
labor
of
finding
and
collating
the
contexts
in
which
it
occurred,
and
educing
the
14
different
meanings
that
I
was
able
to
discern—I
have
found
still
others
since
then!—was
great
enough
to
make
me
realize
that
if
Freud
had
undertaken
to
work
his
own
theories
over
continuously
in
this
way,
after
a
few
years
he
would
not
have
had
time
to
analyze
any
more
patients,
much
less
write
anything
new.
It
is
true,
I
was
able
to
sift
out
a
core
meaning
to
my
own
satisfaction,
but
it
remains
to
be
seen
whether
many
psychoanalysts
will
be
convinced
that
they
should
abandon
the
other
dozen
or
so
types
of
usage.
With
Freud’s
free-­‐and-­‐easy
example
for
precedent,
some
find
it
easy
to
justify
putting
off
the
evil
day

50. when
terms
will
start
to
have
definite,
restrictive
meanings.
So
far,
I
have
emphasized
the
knowingly
provisional,
tentative
nature
of
Freud’s
theorizing,
his
deliberate
abjuring
of
any
attempt
to
build
a
complete
and
internally
coherent
system,
in
favor
of
piecemeal
empiricism
instead—quite
a
contrast
to
the
view
of
Freud
as
the
dogmatic
systematist
who
would
brook
no
deviation
from
a
rigid
“party
line’’
of
theory!
Yet
this
popular
conception
has
its
roots
in
fact
also.
For
one
thing,
Freud
seems
to
have
had
a
fluctuating,
never
explicit
set
of
standards
about
what
parts
of
psychoanalysis
had
been
proved,
which
only
he
might
change
with
impunity,
and
what
parts
were
modifiable
by
others.
True
to
his
agglutinative
principle
of
revision,
he
welcomed
additions
so
long
as
they
did
not
explicitly
call
for
reconsideration
of
concepts
and
propositions
that
had
come
to
seem
basic
and
necessary.
Thus,
Adler’s
ideas
about
organ
inferiority
and
the
will
to
power
were
acceptable
until
the
disciple
started
insisting
that
they
clashed
with
the
libido
theory
and
demanded
the
latter’s
drastic
revision.
STYLE
OF
THEORIZING
Quite
aside
from
Freud’s
relation
to
the
contributions
of
others
(a
matter
that
is
obviously
a
great
deal
more
complicated
than
the
above
brief
discussion
might
seem
to
imply),
there
are
bases
for
the
conception
of
Freud
as
a
doctrinaire
dogmatist
in
certain
stylistic
peculiarities
of
his
own
theorizing.
Let
me
summarize
first
and
then
expand,
with
examples.
Freud
was
fond
of
stating
things
“as
it
were,
dogmatically—in
the
most
concise
form
and
in
the
most
unequivocal
terms”
(1940,
p.
144);
indeed,
hyperbole
was
one
of
his
favorite
rhetorical
devices.
When
he
thought
that
he
glimpsed
a
law
of
nature,
he
stated
it
with
sweeping
universalism
and
generality.
He
was
likewise
fond
of
extending
concepts
to

51. the
limit
of
their
possible
applicability,
as
if
stretching
the
realm
of
phenomena
spanned
by
a
concept
was
a
way
to
make
it
more
abstract
and
useful.
His
device
for
escaping
the
dangers
of
oversimplification
to
which
this
pattern
exposed
him
was
to
follow
one
flat
statement
with
another
that
qualified
it
by
partial
contradiction.
Therefore,
the
inconsistency
in
many
of
Freud's
propositions
is
only
apparent.
He
was
perfectly
well
aware
that
one
statement
undid
another,
and
used
such
sequences
as
a
way
of
letting
a
richly
complicated
conception
grow
in
the
reader’s
mind
as
considerations
were
introduced
one
at
a
time.
Here,
then,
is
one
reason
why
Freud
is
at
once
so
delightfully
easy
to
read,
and
so
easy
to
misunderstand,
particularly
when
statements
are
taken
out
of
context.
His
view
of
human
behavior
was
unusually
subtle,
complex,
and
many-­‐layered;
if
he
had
tried
to
set
it
forth
in
sentences
of
parallel
complexity
and
hierarchical
structure,
he
would
have
made
Dr.
Johnson
look
like
Hemingway.
Instead,
he
writes
simply,
directly,
forcefully;
he
dramatizes
by
grand
overstatement,
setting
out
in
hard
black
outlines
what
he
considers
the
basic
truth
about
a
matter
as
the
reader’s
initial
orientation.
Then
he
fills
in
shadows;
or,
by
another
boldly
simple
stroke,
suddenly
shows
that
forms
are
disposed
on
different
planes.
Gradually,
a
three-­‐dimensional
reality
takes
shape
before
the
eyes
of
the
one
who
knows
how
to
read
Freud.
Here
is
an
example
of
an
initial
flat
statement,
followed
by
qualifications:
The
way
in
which
dreams
treat
the
category
of
contraries
and
contradictories
is
highly
remarkable.
It
is
simply
disregarded.
'No'
seems
not
to
exist
so
far
as
dreams
are
concerned.
(1900,
p.
318)
I
have
asserted
above
that
dreams
have
no
means
of
expressing
the
relation
of
a

52. contradiction,
a
contrary
or
a
'no.'
I
shall
now
proceed
to
give
a
first
denial
of
this
assertion.
|The
idea
of
‘just
the
reverse'
is
plastically
represented
as
something
turned
around
from
its
usual
orientation.)
(p.
326)
...
the
‘‘not
being
able
to
do
something"
in
this
dream
was
a
way
of
expressing
a
contradiction—a
‘no’—;
so
that
my
earlier
statement
that
dreams
cannot
express
a
"no"
requires
correction,
(p.
337)
(A
third
"denial"
appears
on
p.
434.)
Perhaps
an
even
more
familiar
sweeping
generalization
is
the
following:
Psycho-­‐analysis
is
justly
suspicious.
One
of
its
rules
is
that
whatever
interrupts
the
progress
of
analytic
work
is
a
resistance.
(1900,
p.
517)
Less
often
quoted
is
Freud’s
footnote,
in
which
he
makes
this
statement—so
infuriating
to
many
an
analyzand!—more
palatable;
it
is
.
.
.
easily
open
to
misunderstanding.
It
is
of
course
only
to
be
taken
as
a
technical
rule,
as
a
warning
to
analysts.
It
cannot
be
disputed
that
in
the
course
of
an
analysis
various
events
may
occur
the
responsibility
for
which
cannot
be
laid
upon
the
patient's
intentions.
His
father
may
die
without
his
having
murdered
him;
or
a
war
may
break
out
which
brings
the
analysis
to
an
end.
But
behind
its
obvious
exaggeration
the
proposition
is
asserting
something
both
true
and
new.
Even
if
the
interrupting
event
is
a
real
one
and
independent
of
the
patient,
it
often
depends
on
him
how
great
an
interruption
it
causes;
and
resistance
shows
itself
unmistakably
in
the
readiness
with
which
he
accepts
an
occurrence
of
this
kind
or
the
exaggerated
use
which
he
makes
of
it.
(emphasis
added)
All
too
often
(and
unfortunately
difficult
to
illustrate
by
quotation),
the
softening
statement
following
the
initial
overgeneralization
is
not
explicitly
pointed
out,
may
not
follow
very
soon,
or
is
not
obviously
related.
For
Freud,
however,
this
was
a
conscious
strategy
of
scientific
advance;
the
transformations
of
scientific
opinion
are
developments,

53. not
revolutions.
A
law
which
was
held
at
first
to
be
universally
valid
proves
to
be
a
special
case
of
a
more
comprehensive
uniformity,
or
is
limited
by
another
law,
not
discovered
till
later;
a
rough
approximation
to
the
truth
is
replaced
by
a
more
carefully
adapted
one,
which
in
turn
awaits
further
perfecting
(cf.
1927,
p.
55).
Many
examples
of
statements
formulated
with
arresting
exaggeration
can
easily
be
cited.
On
the
basis
of
our
analysis
of
the
ego
it
cannot
be
doubted
that
in
cases
of
mania
the
ego
and
the
ego
ideal
have
fused
together.
(1921,
p.
132)
.
.
.
hysteria
.
.
.
is
concerned
only
with
the
patient’s
repressed
sexuality.
(1906,
p.
278)
.
.
.
no
one
can
doubt
that
the
hypnotist
has
stepped
into
the
place
of
the
ego
ideal.
(1921,
p.
114)
It
is
certain
that
much
of
the
ego
is
itself
unconscious,
and
notably
what
we
may
describe
as
its
nucleus;
only
a
small
part
of
it
is
covered
by
the
term
“preconscious.”
(1920,
p.
19)
Strachey
appends
the
following
rather
amusing
footnote
to
the
above
passage:
In
its
present
form
this
sentence
dates
from
1921.
In
the
first
edition
(1920)
it
ran:
“It
may
be
that
much
of
the
ego
is
itself
unconscious;
only
a
part
of
it,
probably,
is
covered
by
the
term
‘preconscious’.”
In
this
case,
it
took
only
a
year
for
a
cautious
probability
to
become
a
certainty.
In
other
instances,
hyperbole
takes
the
form
of
the
assertion
of
an
underlying
unity
where
only
a
correlation
is
observed:
All
these
three
kinds
of
regression
[topographical,
temporal,
and
formal]
are,
however,
one
at
bottom
and
occur
together
as
a
rule;
for
what
is
older
in
time
is
more
primitive
in
form
and
in
psychical
topography
lies
nearer
to
the
perceptual
end.
(1900,
p.
548)

54. All
too
often,
the
sweeping
formulation
takes
the
form
of
a
declaration
that
something
like
the
Oedipus
complex
is
universal.
I
believe
that
Freud
was
less
interested
in
making
an
empirical
generalization
from
his
limited
data
than
in
groping
in
this
way
for
a
basic
law
of
nature.
As
Jones
summarizes
the
letter
of
October
15,
1897,
to
Fliess,
He
had
discovered
in
himself
the
passion
for
his
mother
and
jealousy
of
his
father;
he
felt
sure
that
this
was
a
general
human
characteristic
and
that
from
it
one
could
understand
the
powerful
effect
of
the
Oedipus
legend.
(Jones,
1953,
p.
326)
Again,
four
years
later,
he
generalized
universally
from
his
own
case:
There
thus
runs
through
my
thoughts
a
continuous
current
of
'personal
reference,'
of
which
I
generally
have
no
inkling,
but
which
betrays
itself
by
such
instances
of
my
forgetting
names.
It
is
as
if
I
were
obliged
to
compare
everything
I
hear
about
other
people
with
myself;
as
if
my
personal
complexes
were
put
on
the
alert
whenever
another
person
is
brought
to
my
notice.
This
cannot
possibly
be
an
individual
peculiarity
of
my
own:
it
must
rather
contain
an
indication
of
the
way
in
which
we
understand
“something
other
than
ourself''
in
general.
I
have
reasons
for
supposing
that
other
people
are
in
this
respect
very
similar
to
me.
(1901,
p.
24)
To
the
contemporary
psychologist,
trained
to
be
cautious
in
generalizing
from
small
samples,
it
seems
audacious
to
the
point
of
foolhardiness
to
jump
from
self-­‐observation
to
a
general
law.
But
Freud
was
emboldened
by
the
very
fact
that
he
was
dealing
with
vital
issues:
I
feel
a
fundamental
aversion
towards
your
suggestion
that
my
conclusions
[about
the
sexual
etiology
of
neurosis]
are
correct,
but
only
for
certain
cases.
.
.That
is
not
very
well
possible.
Entirely
or
not
at
all.
They
are
concerned
with
such
fundamental
matters
that
they
could
not
be
valid
for
one
set
of
cases
only.
.
.
.There
is
only
our
kind
or
else
nothing
at
all
is
known.
An
fond
you
must
be
of
the
same
opinion.
So
now
I
have
confessed
all
my
fanaticism!
(Letter
to
Jung,
April
19,
1909;
in
Jones,
1955,
p.
439)

55. Remember,
also,
the
fact
that
Freud's
initial
scientific
efforts
considerably
antedated
the
invention
of
statistics,
sampling
theory,
or
experimental
design.
In
his
early
days,
when
he
was
most
secure
in
his
role
as
scientist,
Freud
was
studying
neuroanatomy
at
the
microscope,
and
like
his
respected
teachers
and
colleagues,
generalizing
freely
and
automatically
from
samples
of
one!
Then
too,
recall
that
Freud
was
the
promulgator
of
the
principle
of
exceptionless
determinism
in
psychology:
all
aspects
of
behavior
were
lawful,
he
believed,
which
made
it
easy
for
him
to
confuse
(a)
the
universal
applicability
of
abstract
laws
and
concepts
with
(b)
the
universal
occurrence
of
empirically
observable
behavioral
sequences.
Finally,
we
are
so
used
to
considering
Freud
a
“personality
theorist’’
that
we
forget
how
little
interested
he
was
in
individual
differences
as
against
general
principles.
He
once
wrote
to
Abraham:
“Personality’’
.
.
.
is
a
rather
indefinite
expression
taken
from
surface
psychology,
and
it
doesn’t
contribute
much
to
our
understanding
of
the
real
processes,
i.e.
metapsychologically.
(Quoted
in
Jones,
1955,
p.
438)
Despite
the
fact
that
he
wrote
great
case
histories,
he
used
them
to
illustrate
his
abstract
formulations,
and
had
no
conviction
about
the
scientific
value
or
interest
of
the
single
case
except
as
a
possible
source
of
new
ideas.
The
inclination
to
generalize
sweepingly
may
be
seen
also
in
Freud’s
tendency
to
stretch
the
bounds
of
his
concepts.
The
best-­‐known,
not
to
say
most
notorious
example,
is
that
of
sexuality.
In
his
earliest
papers,
the
“sexual
etiology
of
neurosis’’
meant
literal
seduction,
always
involving
the
stimulation
of
the
genitals.
Rather
quickly,
in
the
Three

56. Essays,
the
concept
was
expanded,
first
to
include
all
of
the
“partial
drives,”
based
on
the
oral,
anal,
and
phallic-­‐urethral
erogenous
zones,
plus
the
eye
(for
voyeurism
and
exhibitionism).
But
as
he
found
cases
in
which
other
parts
of
the
body
seemed
to
serve
the
function
of
sexual
organs,
Freud
extended
the
concept
of
erogenous
zone
to
include
the
proposition
that
all
parts
of
the
skin,
plus
all
the
sensitive
internal
organs,
might
give
rise
to
sexual
excitation.
Further,
“all
comparatively
intense
affective
processes,
including
even
terrifying
ones,
trench
upon
sexuality”
(1905b,
p.
203);
and
finally:
It
may
well
be
that
nothing
of
considerable
importance
can
occur
in
the
organism
without
contributing
some
component
to
the
excitation
of
the
sexual
instinct,
(p.
205)
A
similar
process
seems
to
have
gone
on
in
Freud’s
blurring
of
the
distinctions
among
the
various
ego
instincts,
and
that
between
ego
instincts
and
narcissistic
libido,
which
was
resolved
by
his
finally
putting
everything
together
in
the
notion
of
Eros,
the
life
instinct.
METHOD
OF
WORK
Having
so
far
surveyed
some
of
the
general
features
of
Freud’s
thinking
and
his
style
of
scientific
theorizing,
let
us
now
ask
how
he
worked
with
his
data.
So
far,
we
have
seen
only
that
he
stressed
observation
as
the
primary
tool
of
scientific
empiricism.
His
most
important
patient,
let
us
remember,
was
himself.
In
his
self-­‐analysis
(particularly
during
the
late
1890’s),
he
made
his
fundamental
discoveries:
the
meaning
of
dreams,
the
Oedipus
complex,
childhood
sexuality,
and
so
forth.
This
fact
should
remind
us
of
his
gift
for
self-­‐
observation.
It
was
of
course
the
age
of
trained
introspection
as
a
scientific
method
of
the
academic
psychologists;
but
that
was
something
else
again.
Freud’s
self-­‐observation
was
of
that
kind
we
call
psychologically-­‐minded;
he
was
no
phenomenologist,
curious
about
the

57. raw
givens
of
experience
or
interested
in
analyzing
the
data
of
consciousness
in
their
“presentational
immediacy’’
(Whitehead).
Even
when
looking
inward,
he
tried
to
penetrate
the
surface
of
what
he
found
there,
to
look
for
causes
in
terms
of
wishes,
affects,
hopes,
fantasies,
and
the
residues
of
childhood
emotional
experiences.
Consider
how
little
one
ever
heard
of
such
matters
from
Wundt
or
Titchener,
and
it
becomes
apparent
that
Freud’s
cognitive
style
played
a
role
in
his
unique
use
of
a
common
instrument.
Observation,
when
applied
to
his
other
patients,
meant
first
of
all
the
use
of
free
association.
The
patient
was
encouraged
to
report
everything
about
himself
without
censorship,
so
that
the
analyst
might
observe
directly
the
struggle
to
comply
with
this
seemingly
simple
request,
and
observe
indirectly
the
broadest
range
of
important
life
experiences
as
reported.
But
these
therapeutically
significant
facts,
and
the
even
more
important
manifestations
of
the
transference
that
developed
in
the
actual
interpersonal
situation
of
treatment,
were
typically
buried
in
a
haystack
of
trivial
details.
Freud
accordingly
had
to
develop
himself
into
a
highly
selective
instrument
which
at
the
same
time
was
as
much
as
possible
free
of
bias.
The
solution
he
adopted,
that
of
an
“evenly-­‐
suspended
attention’’
(1912a,
p.
111),
matched
in
its
seeming
unselectiveness
the
attitude
urged
on
the
freely
associating
patient;
in
both,
the
theory
affirmed
that
the
process
of
suspending
conventional
standards
of
conscious
judgment
would
let
unconscious
forces
guide
the
production
and
the
reception
of
the
data.
Only
a
man
with
a
basic
trust
in
the
depths
of
his
own
being
would
have
been
willing
to
let
his
conscious
intelligence
partially
abdicate
in
this
manner.
The
principal
activity
of
the
analyst,
Freud
indicated,
was
offering
interpretations
of
the

58. patient’s
productions.
In
a
way,
these
constitute
a
first
level
of
conceptualization
(that
is,
a
first
processing
of
data)
as
well
as
an
intervention
that
was
calculated
to
produce
further
and
altered
material
from
the
patient.
In
the
later
processing
of
the
accumulated
data
on
a
case,
and
indeed
of
other
types
of
data,
interpretation
plays
a
crucial
role;
in
some
respects,
it
is
what
gives
psychoanalysis
its
unique
character
as
a
mode
of
inquiry
into
human
behavior.
Whether
Freud
offered
the
interpretation
to
the
patient
or
merely
used
it
in
his
formulation
of
the
essential
features
of
the
case,
it
often
took
the
genetic
form
of
a
historical
reconstruction
of
sequences
of
critical
events
in
the
patient's
past.
Here
we
see
a
characteristic
feature
of
Freud’s
thinking:
the
use
of
historical
(rather
than
ahistorical)
causality.
Since
Kurt
Lewin,
the
fashion
in
psychology
has
been
strongly
in
favor
of
ahistorical
causality,
though
the
historical
form
has
recently
been
vigorously
argued
in
a
highly
sophisticated
way
(Culbertson,
1963).
As
Freud
used
interpretation
in
the
narrower
sense,
it
was
essentially
a
process
of
translation,
in
which
meanings
in
the
patient’s
behavior
and
words
were
replaced
by
a
smaller
set
of
other
meanings
according
to
more
or
less
specifiable
rules
(Holt,
1961).
But
these
rules
were
loose
and
peculiar,
for
they
incorporated
the
assumption
that
the
patient’s
communications
had
been
subjected
to
a
set
of
(largely
defensive)
distortions
according
to
the
irrational
primary
process.
The
analyst’s
job,
therefore,
was
to
reverse
the
distortions
in
decoding
the
patient’s
productions
in
order
to
discern
the
nature
of
his
unconscious
conflicts
and
his
modes
of
struggling
with
them.
It
is
thus
a
method
of
discovery.
With
the
minor
exception
of
a
number
of
recurrent
symbols,
the
rules
for
such
decoding
can
be
stated
in
only
general
terms,
and
a
great
deal
is
left
to
the
analyst’s
creative
use
of
his
own
primary
process.

59. Interpretation
is
therefore
obviously
difficult
to
use
and
easy
to
abuse,
as
Freud
knew
full
well.
One
of
his
favorite
criticisms
of
dissident
former
followers
was
that
their
interpretations
were
arbitrary
or
farfetched.
What,
then,
were
his
criteria
for
distinguishing
deep
and
insightful
from
merely
strained
and
remote
interpretations?
The
most
detailed
discussions
that
I
have
found
of
this
question
date
back
to
the
middle
1890’s,
when
Freud
was
defending
his
theory
that
neurosis
was
caused
by
the
repressed
trauma
of
actual
sexual
seduction
in
infancy.
He
gave
a
number
of
criteria,
like
the
kind
and
amount
of
affect
and
resistance
shown,
by
which
he
satisfied
himself
that
the
interpretations
(or
historical
constructions)
that
he
offered
his
patients
along
these
lines
were
valid,
and
for
believing
the
reports
by
some
of
them
that
initially
stimulated
him
to
essay
this
approach.
Yet
as
we
know,
none
of
those
presumed
safeguards
was
sufficient;
Freud
finally
decided
to
reject
the
“recollections”
as
fantasies.
To
this
day,
providing
criteria
for
evaluating
interpretations
remains
one
of
the
major
unsolved
methodological
problems
in
all
schools
of
psychoanalysis.
METHOD
OF
PROVING
POINTS
(VERIFICATION)
Once
he
had
made
his
interpretations
and
genetic
explanations
of
his
various
types
of
data
to
his
own
satisfaction,
Freud
had
formed
his
principal
hypotheses.
Now
he
set
about
proving
them.
Let
us
examine
the
ways
he
attempted
to
establish
his
points
by
marshaling
his
evidence
and
his
arguments.
Surprisingly,
he
often
used
what
is
essentially
statistical
reasoning
to
make
his
points.
True,
it
generally
takes
the
simple
form
of
assuring
the
reader
that
he
has
seen
the
phenomenon
in
question
repeatedly:

60. If
it
were
a
question
of
one
case
only
like
that
of
my
patient,
one
would
shrug
it
aside.
No
one
would
dream
of
erecting
upon
a
single
observation
a
belief
which
implies
taking
such
a
decisive
line.
But
you
must
believe
me
when
I
assure
you
that
this
is
not
the
only
case
in
my
experience.
(1933,
p.
42)
Many
psychologists
seem
to
have
the
impression
that
Freud
frequently
based
major
propositions
on
single
cases;
but
I
have
carefully
searched
all
his
major
case
histories
for
instances,
and
have
found
none.5
He
wrote
as
early
as
the
case
of
Dora,
“A
single
case
can
never
be
capable
of
proving
a
theorem
so
general
as
this
one”
(1905c,
p.
115).
In
his
earliest
psychoanalytic
papers,
Freud
again
and
again
quoted
such
statistics
as
the
following:
.
.
.
my
assertion
.
.
.
is
supported
by
the
fact
that
in
some
eighteen
cases
of
hysteria
I
have
been
able
to
discover
this
connection
in
every
single
symptom,
and,
where
the
circumstances
allowed,
to
confirm
it
by
therapeutic
success.
No
doubt
you
may
raise
the
objection
that
the
nineteenth
or
the
twentieth
analysis
will
perhaps
show
that
hysterical
symptoms
are
derived
from
other
sources
as
well,
and
thus
reduce
the
universal
validity
of
the
sexual
aetiology
to
one
of
eighty
per
cent.
By
all
means
let
us
wait
and
see;
but,
since
these
eighteen
cases
are
at
the
same
time
all
the
cases
on
which
I
have
been
able
to
carry
out
the
work
of
analysis
and
since
they
were
not
picked
out
by
anyone
for
my
convenience,
you
will
find
it
understandable
that
I
do
not
share
such
an
expectation
but
am
prepared
to
let
my
belief
run
ahead
of
the
evidential
force
of
the
observations
I
have
so
far
made.
(1896,
p.
199f.)
Boring
(1954)
has
pointed
out
that
in
such
a
use
of
statistical
reasoning
as
this,
Freud
did
not
advance
beyond
Mill’s
method
of
agreement,
which
is
his
most
elementary
and
least
trustworthy
canon
of
induction.
In
the
paper
I
have
just
quoted,
Freud
considered
the
possibility
of
using
the
essence
of
Mill’s
recommended
joint
method
of
agreement
and
5
See
above,
however,
for
examples
of
his
generalizing
freely
from
self-­‐observation.
Apparently,
the
inherently
compelling
nature
of
introspective
data
overrode
his
general
caution.

61. disagreement.
It
will
be
objected,
he
says,
that
many
children
are
seduced
but
do
not
become
hysterical,
which
he
allows
to
be
true
without
undermining
his
argument;
for
he
compares
seduction
to
the
ubiquitous
tubercle
bacillus,
which
is
“inhaled
by
far
more
people
than
are
found
to
fall
ill
of
tuberculosis”
(p.
209),
yet
the
bacillus
is
the
specific
determinant
of
the
disease—its
necessary
but
not
sufficient
cause.
He
considered
the
possibility
that
there
may
be
hysterical
patients
who
have
not
undergone
seduction
but
quickly
dismissed
it;
such
supposed
instances
had
not
been
psychoanalyzed,
so
the
allegation
had
not
been
proved.
In
the
end,
therefore,
Freud
simply
argued
his
way
out
of
the
necessity
to
consider
any
but
his
own
positive
cases,
and
was
thus
unable
to
use
statistical
reasoning
in
any
cogent
or
coercive
way.
In
point
of
fact,
references
in
his
papers
to
numbers
of
cases
treated
dropped
out
almost
entirely
after
1900;
instead,
one
finds
confident
quasi-­‐quantitative
claims
of
this
kind:
“This
discovery,
which
was
easy
to
make
and
could
be
confirmed
as
often
as
one
liked
.
.
.”
(1906,
p.
272),
or
such
severe
admonitions
as
this:
The
teachings
of
psychoanalysis
are
based
on
an
incalculable
number
of
observations
and
experiences,
and
only
someone
who
has
repeated
these
observations
on
himself
and
on
others
is
in
a
position
to
arrive
at
a
judgment
of
his
own
upon
it.
(1940,
p.
144)
In
the
long
quotation
from
1896
just
above,
note
the
entry
of
another
characteristic
mode
of
argument
often
used
by
Freud:
the
theory
is
proved
by
its
therapeutic
successes.
Sometimes
it
is
stated
with
what
we
have
seen
to
be
characteristic
hyperbole:
The
fact
that
in
the
technique
of
psycho-­‐analysis
a
means
has
been
found
by
which
the
opposing
force
[of
anticathexis
in
repression]
can
be
removed
and
the
ideas
in
question
made
conscious
renders
this
theory
irrefutable.
(1923,
p.
14)

62. I
could
quote
many
passages
in
which
the
same
general
type
of
argument
is
made:
Freud
cites
as
“proof”
or
as
“confirmation”
a
set
of
circumstances
that
does
serve
to
enhance
the
probability
that
the
statement
made
is
true,
but
does
not
nail
it
down
in
a
rigorous
way.
The
ultimate
means
of
proof,
for
Freud,
was
the
simple
ostensive
one:
We
are
told
that
the
town
of
Constance
lies
on
the
Bodensee.
A
student
song
adds:
“if
you
don’t
believe
it,
go
and
see.’’
I
happen
to
have
been
there
and
can
confirm
the
fact
…
(1927,
p.
25)
In
many
places,
Freud
applied
this
basic
principle
of
reality
testing
to
psychoanalysis—
if
you
don’t
believe,
go
and
see
for
yourself;
and
until
you
have
been
analyzed
and,
preferably,
also
have
been
trained
to
carry
out
psychoanalyses
of
others
yourself,
you
have
no
basis
to
be
skeptical.
Freud
did
not
see
that
the
promulgator
of
an
assertion
takes
on
himself
the
burden
of
proving
it.
It
is
doubtful
that
he
ever
heard
of
the
null
hypothesis;
surely
he
had
no
conception
of
the
sophisticated
methodology
that
this
strange
term
connotes.
In
several
places,
he,
as
it
were,
quite
innocently
reveals
his
unawareness
that
for
empirical
propositions
to
be
taken
seriously,
they
should
be
in
principle
refutable.
For
example,
after
asserting
that
“a
wish
which
is
represented
in
a
dream
must
be
an
infantile
one,”
(1900,
p.
553;
emphasis
is
Freud’s),
he
remarks:
I
am
aware
that
this
assertion
cannot
be
proved
to
hold
universally;
but
it
can
be
proved
to
hold
frequently,
even
in
unsuspected
cases,
and
it
cannot
be
contradicted
as
a
general
proposition.
(1900,
p.
554)
At
least,
in
this
passage
he
showed
the
realization
that
a
universal
proposition
cannot
be
proved;
yet
later
he
was
to
refer
to
another
such

63. rule
laid
down
in
The
Interpretation
of
Dreams
.
.
.
[as]
since
confirmed
beyond
all
doubt,
that
words
and
speeches
in
the
dream-­‐content
are
not
freshly
formed
.
.
.
(1917,
p. 228)
True,
every
fresh
instance
of
a
claimed
universal
proposition
does
strengthen
its
credibility
and
the
probability
that
it
is
trustworthy.
If
we
keep
in
mind
that
nothing
more
is
meant
in
psychoanalytic
writing
by
claims
of
proof,
we
shall
be
on
relatively
safe
ground.
Freud
did
not
usually
write
as
if
he
were
familiar
with
the
distinction
between
forming
hypotheses
and
testing
them.
Yet
he
was
aware
of
it,
and
at
times
was
modest
enough
about
the
exploratory
nature
of
his
work:
Thus
this
view
has
been
arrived
at
by
inference;
and
if
from
an
inference
of
this
kind
one
is
led,
not
to
a
familiar
region,
but
on
the
contrary,
to
one
that
is
alien
and
new
to
one's
thought,
one
calls
the
inference
a
“hypothesis”
and
rightly
refuses
to
regard
the
relation
of
the
hypothesis
to
the
material
from
which
it
was
inferred
as
a
“proof”
of
it.
It
can
only
be
regarded
as
“proved”
if
it
is
reached
by
another
path
as
well
[N.B.:
cross-­‐
validation!]
and
if
it
can
be
shown
to
be
the
nodal
point
of
still
other
connections.
(1905a,
p.
177f.)
I
have
examined
Freud’s
methods
of
arraying
his
data
and
reasoning
about
them
in
the
attempt
to
prove
his
points
in
two
ways:
by
making
a
general
collection
whenever
I
came
across
instances
where
he
drew
conclusions
explicitly,
and
by
a
careful
scrutiny
of
all
his
arguments
for
the
concept
of
a
psychic
unconscious
in
two
of
his
major
papers,
“A
Note
on
the
Unconscious
in
Psychoanalysis”
(1912b)
and
“The
Unconscious”
(1915c).
It
would
be
tedious
and
time-­‐consuming
to
document
my
analyses
of
his
modes
of
argument;
I
shall
merely
give
my
conclusion.
It
is,
quite
simply,
that
Freud
seldom
proved
anything
in
a
rigorous
sense
of
the
word.

64. He
rarely
subjected
hypotheses
to
the
kind
of
cross-­‐validational
check
that
he
advocated
in
the
last
passage
quoted.
He
is
often
convincing,
almost
never
coercively
so.
He
was
quite
ready
to
use
devices
he
spoke
of
slightingly
in
his
sharp
critiques
of
the
reasoning
used
by
his
opponents:
the
authoritative
dictum,
begging
the
question,
arguments
by
analogy,
and
retreats
to
the
discussion
of
“matters
which
are
so
remote
from
the
problems
of
our
observation,
and
of
which
we
have
so
little
cognizance,
that
it
is
as
idle
to
dispute
.
.
.
as
to
affirm”
them
(1914,
p.
79).
Actually,
what
Freud
does
is
to
make
use
of
all
the
resources
of
rhetoric.
He
backs
up
a
general
statement
by
a
telling
example
in
which
it
is
clearly
operative;
he
constructs
plausible
chains
of
cause
and
effect
(after
the
principle
of
post
hoc
ergo
propter
hoc),
he
argues
a
fortiori;
and
he
uses
enthymemes
to
draw
reasoned
conclusions.
An
enthymeme
corresponds
in
rhetoric
to
the
syllogism
in
logic.6
In
it,
one
premise
is
often
but
not
necessarily
suppressed,
and,
unlike
the
syllogism,
it
is
a
method
of
establishing
probable
rather
than
exact
or
absolute
truth.
Further,
he
seeks
to
win
our
agreement
by
a
disarming
directness
of
personal
address,
and
by
stepping
into
the
role
of
the
opponent
to
raise
difficult
arguments
against
himself,
after
which
his
points
in
refutation
seem
all
the
more
telling.
His
writing
is
vivid
with
metaphor
and
personification,
with
flashes
of
wit,
poetical
flights
into
extended
analogies
or
similes,
and
many
other
such
devices
to
avoid
a
consistently
abstract
level
of
discourse.
When
the
line
of
reasoning
in
a
number
of
his
enthymemes
in
“The
Unconscious”
is
6
For
examples,
see
the
passages
quoted
from
Freud
(1901,
on
p.
45
above,
and
the
next
passage
quoted,
on
p.
46).
above.

65. carefully
explicated,
it
is
surprisingly
weak
and
involves
several
non
sequiturs.
In
his
attempts
to
refute
others,
he
frequently
made
use
of
the
rhetorical
device
of
making
the
other’s
argument
appear
improbable
by
appealing
to
its
implausibility
to
common
sense
and
everyday
observation.
In
the
first
place,
he
[Rank]
assumes
that
the
infant
has
received
certain
sensory
impressions,
in
particular
of
a
visual
kind,
at
the
time
of
birth,
the
renewal
of
which
can
recall
to
its
memory
the
trauma
of
birth
and
thus
evoke
a
reaction
of
anxiety.
This
assumption
is
quite
unfounded
and
extremely
improbable.
It
is
not
credible
that
a
child
should
retain
any
but
tactile
and
general
sensations
relating
to
the
process
of
birth.
(1926a,
p.
135)
USE
OF
FIGURES
OF
SPEECH
Because
I
have
a
special
interest
in
figures
of
speech,
I
paid
particular
attention
to
the
way
Freud
used
this
rhetorical
device.
The
editors
of
the
Standard
Edition
have
made
the
task
relatively
easy
by
index
entries,
for
each
volume,
under
the
heading
“Analogies.”
Picking
two
volumes
more
or
less
at
random
(XII
and
XIV),
I
looked
up
the
31
analogies
so
indexed
and
attempted
to
see
in
what
way
Freud
employed
them.
As
one
professor
of
rhetoric
(Genung,
1900)
has
said,
“The
value
both
of
example
and
of
analogy
is
after
all
rather
illustrative
than
argumentative;
they
are
in
reality
instruments
of
exposition,
employed
to
make
the
subject
so
clear
.
.
.
that
men
can
see
the
truth
or
error
of
it
for
themselves.”
For
the
most
part,
in
these
two
volumes
Freud
used
analogies
as
“instruments
of
exposition,”
included
after
an
argument
had
been
completely
stated
in
its
own
terms,
to
add
lively,
visualizable
concreteness;
some
of
them
are
little
jokes,
adding
a
touch
of
comic
relief
to
lighten
the
reader’s
burden.
At
times,
however,
the
analogy
moves
into
the
mainstream
of
the
argument
and
serves
a
more
direct
rhetorical
purpose;
this
is

66. true,
surprisingly
enough,
a
good
deal
more
often
in
Vol.
XIV,
which
contains
the
austere
metapsychological
papers,
than
in
Vol.
XII,
largely
devoted
to
the
case
of
Schreber
and
the
papers
on
technique.
It
turns
out,
however,
that
the
argumentative
use
of
analogy
occurs
largely
in
the
polemical
passages
where
Freud
is
attempting
to
refute
the
principal
arguments
with
which
Jung
and
Adler
severed
their
ties
to
classical
psychoanalysis;
mostly,
it
takes
the
form
of
ridicule,
a
form
of
discrediting
an
opponent
by
making
his
argument
appear
ludicrous
rather
than
meeting
it
on
its
own
grounds.
It
is
not
difficult
to
understand
how
angry
Freud
must
have
felt
at
the
apostasies
in
rapid
succession
of
two
of
his
most
gifted
and
promising
adherents,
so
that
strong
affect
had
its
usual
effect
of
degrading
the
level
of
argument.
Freud
used
analogies
in
two
other
kinds
of
ways
in
the
metapsychological
papers,
however.
In
a
few
instances,
the
analogy
seems
to
have
played
the
role
of
a
model.
That
is,
when
he
wrote
that
“The
complex
of
melancholia
behaves
like
an
open
wound,
drawing
to
itself
.
.
.
‘anticathexes’
.
.
.
from
all
directions,
and
emptying
the
ego
until
it
is
totally
impoverished’’
(1917,
p.
253),
he
revived
an
image
that
he
had
used
in
an
unpublished
draft,
written
and
sent
to
Fliess
20
years
earlier
(1887-­‐1902,
p.
107f.);
moreover,
he
was
to
use
it
again
five
years
later
in
the
theory
of
traumatic
neurosis
(1920,
p.
30).
Interestingly
enough,
in
none
of
these
versions
did
Freud
say
explicitly
what
there
is
about
a
wound
that
makes
it
a
useful
analogue.
Obviously,
however,
he
had
in
mind
the
way
that
leucocytes
gather
around
the
margins
of
a
physical
lesion,
a
medical
mechanism
of
defense
that
may
well
be
a
principal
ancestor
of
the
concept
of
psychic
defense
mechanisms.
Surely
it
formed
an
important
pattern
of
Freud’s
thought,
one
that
directly
influenced
the
kinds
of
psychological
constructs
he
invoked
and
some
of
what
he
did
with
them.

67. The
other
use
of
an
extended
figure
of
speech
does
not
employ
an
analogy
in
the
strict
sense
and
so
is
not
indexed.
(Indeed,
the
vast
majority
of
Freud’s
analogies
are
not
indexed;
only
the
protracted
ones
that
resemble
epic
similes.
But
the
text
is
so
dense
with
tropes
of
one
kind
or
another
that
a
complete
index
would
be
impractically
enormous.)
I
am
referring
to
an
example
of
a
characteristic
Freudian
device,
the
“scientific
myth,”
as
he
called
the
best-­‐known
example,
the
legend
of
the
primal
horde.
Near
the
beginning
of
“Instincts
and
their
Vicissitudes”
(1915a),
after
considering
the
drive
concept
quite
abstractly
from
the
standpoint
of
physiology,
and
in
relation
to
the
concept
of
“stimulus,”
he
suddenly
says:
Let
us
imagine
ourselves
in
the
situation
of
an
almost
entirely
helpless
living
organism,
as
yet
unorientated
in
the
world,
which
is
receiving
stimuli
in
its
nervous
substance,
(p.
119)
What
an
arresting
image!
And
note
that
this
is
no
mere
conventional
figure
of
speech,
in
which
man
is
compared
point
by
point
to
a
hypothetical
primitive
organism.
Instead,
here
we
are
given
an
invitation
to
identification.
Freud
encourages
us
to
anthropomorphize,
to
picture
how
it
would
be
if
we,
as
adult
and
thinking
people,
were
in
the
helpless
and
exposed
position
he
goes
on
to
sketch
so
graphically.
It
seems
natural,
therefore,
when
he
easily
attributes
to
the
little
animalcule
not
only
consciousness
but
self-­‐awareness—an
attribute
we
realize,
on
sober
reflection,
to
be
a
uniquely
human
and
rather
sophisticated
achievement.
His
introductory
phrase,
however,
invites
us
at
once
to
suspend
disbelief
and
waive
the
usual
rules
of
scientific
thinking.
It’s
like
a
child’s
“let's
pretend’’;
it
leads
us
to
expect
that
this
is
not
so
much
a
way
of
pushing
his
argument
forward
as
a
temporary
illustrative
digression;
like
his
usual
analogies,
a
pictorial
holiday
from
hard
theoretical

68. thinking.
We
soon
discover
that
he
uses
this
suspension
of
the
rules
as
a
way
of
allowing
himself
a
freedom
and
fluidity
of
reasoning
that
would
not
otherwise
be
acceptable.
And
yet
he
proceeds
thereafter
as
if
the
point
had
been
proved
in
a
rigorous
way.
The
conception
of
a
completely
vulnerable
organism
swimming
in
a
sea
of
dangerous
energies
was
another
recurrent
image
that
seems
to
have
made
a
profound
impression
on
Freud.
It
plays
an
even
more
critical
role
in
the
development
of
his
argument
in
Beyond
the
Pleasure
Principle,
though
it
is
introduced
in
a
somewhat
soberer
fashion
(“Let
us
picture
a
living
organism
in
its
most
simplified
possible
form
as
an
undifferentiated
vesicle
of
a
substance
that
is
susceptible
to
stimulation”;
1920,
p.
26).
Yet
he
does
not
explicitly
present
it
as
a
hypothesis
about
the
nature
of
the
first
living
organism;
in
fact,
it
never
becomes
quite
clear
just
what
kind
of
existential
status
this
“vesicle”
has.
Freud
proceeds
with
some
digressions
to
suppose
that
the
organism
would
be
killed
by
the
“most
powerful
energies”
surrounding
it
if
it
remained
unprotected,
and
that
the
cooking
of
its
outer
layer
formed
a
crust
that
protected
what
lay
underneath.
Suddenly,
Freud
takes
a
mighty
leap
from
this
original,
partly
damaged
living
cell:
“In
highly
developed
organisms
the
receptive
cortical
layer
of
the
former
vesicle
has
long
been
withdrawn
into
the
depths
of
the
interior
of
the
body,
though
portions
of
it
have
been
left
behind
on
the
surface
immediately
beneath
the
general
shield
against
stimuli”
(p.
27f.).
Implicitly,
he
has
assumed
that
his
unicellular
Adam
has
been
fruitful
and
has
populated
the
earth,
always
passing
along
its
original
scabs
by
the
inheritance
of
acquired
characters.
Just
when
you
think
that
Freud
is
presenting
a
highly
fanciful,
Lamarckian
theory
about
the
origin
of
the
skin,
he
switches
the
metaphor.
First,
however,
he
hypothesizes
that
“The

69. specific
unpleasure
of
physical
pain
is
probably
the
result
of
the
protective
shield
having
been
broken
through
.
.
.
Cathectic
energy
is
summoned
from
all
sides
to
provide
sufficiently
high
cathexes
of
energy
in
the
environs
of
the
breach.
An
‘anticathexis’
on
a
grand
scale
is
set
up,
for
whose
benefit
all
the
other
psychical
systems
are
impoverished”
(p.
30).
Along
about
here,
the
sharp-­‐eyed
reader
will
do
a
double
take:
it
sounded
as
if
Freud
was
talking
about
a
physical
wound
in
the
skin,
but
what
gets
summoned
to
its
margins
is
not
the
white
blood
cells
but
quanta
of
psychic
energy!
Then
on
the
next
page,
we
learn
that
“preparedness
for
anxiety
and
the
hypercathexis
of
the
receptive
systems
constitute
the
last
line
of
defense
of
the
shield
against
stimuli
”
(p.
31).
This
shield,
which
seemed
so
concrete
and
physical,
turns
out
to
be
a
metaphor
wrapped
in
a
myth.
It
is
true
that
this
whole
fourth
chapter
was
introduced
by
the
following
disarmingly
candid
paragraph:
What
follows
is
speculation,
often
far-­‐fetched
speculation,
which
the
reader
will
consider
or
dismiss
according
to
his
individual
predilection.
It
is
further
an
attempt
to
follow
out
an
idea
consistently,
out
of
curiosity
to
see
where
it
will
lead.
(1920,
p.
24)
In
light
of
the
later
development
of
Freud’s
theories,
in
which
as
we
have
seen
he
came
to
lean
on
this
curious
tissue
of
speculations
as
if
it
were
a
stoutly
supportive
fabric,
it
seems
that
this
modest
disclaimer
is
another
“let’s
pretend,’’
so
that
Freud,
like
Brittania,
may
waive
the
rules.
FREUD'S
RHETORIC
The
upshot
of
this
survey
of
the
means
Freud
used
in
his
search
after
truth
is
that
he
relied
heavily
on
all
the
classical
devices
of
rhetoric.
The
effect
is
not
to
prove,
in
any
rigorous
sense,
but
to
persuade,
using
to
some
extent
the
devices
of
an
essayist
but
even

70. more
those
of
an
orator
or
advocate,
who
writes
his
brief
and
then
argues
the
case
with
all
the
eloquence
at
his
disposal.
Notice
that
I
have
based
this
conclusion
primarily
on
a
survey
of
Freud’s
most
technical,
theoretical
papers
and
books.
In
such
masterly
works
for
the
general
reader
as
his
various
series
of
introductory
lectures
(1916-­‐17;
1933)
or
The
Question
of
Lay
Analysis
(1926b),
the
rhetorical
form
is
even
more
explicit;
the
last
named
work
is
actually
cast
in
the
form
of
an
extended
dialogue,
harking
directly
back
to
the
classic
Greek
texts
of
which
Freud
was
so
fond.
There
is
a
tendency
today
to
take
“rhetoric”
as
a
slightly
pejorative
term.
Except
in
the
minds
of
the
Platonists,
it
had
no
such
connotation
in
classical
times.
As
Kennedy
(1963)
points
out,
One
of
the
principal
interests
of
the
Greeks
was
rhetoric.
.
.
.
In
its
origin
and
intention
rhetoric
was
natural
and
good:
it
produced
clarity,
vigor
and
beauty,
and
it
rose
logically
from
the
conditions
and
qualities
of
the
classical
mind.
Greek
society
relied
on
oral
expression.
.
.
.
Political
agitation
was
usually
accomplished
or
defeated
by
word
of
mouth.
The
judicial
system
was
similarly
oral
.
.
.
All
literature
was
written
to
be
heard,
and
even
when
reading
to
himself
a
Greek
read
aloud
(p.
3f.)
Rhetoric,
as
the
theory
of
persuasive
communication,
was
necessarily
a
good
deal
more
than
that;
it
was
the
only
form
of
criticism
in
Greek
thought.
In
one
of
Aristotle’s
definitions,
rhetoric
is
“a
process
of
criticism
wherein
lies
the
path
to
the
principles
of
all
inquiries”
(Topics
I;
quoted
in
McBurney,
1936,
p.
54).
Since
science
was
not
as
sharply
differentiated
from
other
methods
of
seeking
truth
then
as
it
later
became,
rhetoric
was
the
closest
thing
to
scientific
methodology
that
the
Greeks
had.
In
Artistotle’s
presentation,
there
were
two
kinds
of
truth:
exact
or
certain,
and
probable.
The
former
was
the
concern
of
science,
which
operated
by
means
of
syllogistic

71. logic
or
complete
enumeration.
All
other
kinds
of
merely
probabilistic
knowledge
were
the
realms
of
argumentative
inquiry,
which
operated
by
means
of
dialectic
and
rhetoric.
But
the
only
discipline
to
which
Aristotle’s
criterion
of
“unqualified
scientific
knowledge”
applies
is
mathematics
(today
construed
to
include
symbolic
logic);
only
in
such
a
purely
formal
science
can
strict
deductive
procedure
be
used
and
certainty
attained.
I
go
into
this
much
detail
about
Greek
rhetoric
because
it
suggests
to
me
a
possibly
illuminating
hypothesis.
About
all
I
can
do
to
make
it
plausible
is
to
point
out
that
Freud
did
know
Greek
well
and
read
the
classics
in
the
original;
and
among
the
five
courses
or
seminars
he
took
with
Brentano
was
one
on
Logic
and
at
least
one
on
“The
philosophy
of
Aristotle”
(Bernfeld,
1951).
If
Freud
received
any
formal
training
in
methodology,
the
critical
philosophy
of
science,
it
was
with
the
Aristotelian
philosopher-­‐psychologist
Brentano.
I
have
not
found
anywhere
in
Freud’s
works
any
reference
to
Aristotle's
Rhetoric
or
any
direct
evidence
that
he
knew
it;
the
best
I
can
do
is
to
offer
these
bits
of
circumstantial
evidence
(or,
as
Aristotle
would
have
put
it,
to
make
an
argument
from
signs).
It
is,
then,
possible
that
Freud
was
in
this
way
introduced
to
the
devices
of
rhetoric
and
enthymemetic
or
probabilistic
reasoning
as
the
legitimate
instruments
of
inquiry
into
empirical
matters.
His
rejection
of
speculative,
deductively
exact
system-­‐building
may
indicate
that
he
was
accepting
the
Aristotelian
dichotomy
between
exact
(or
mathematical)
and
probable
truth
and
choosing
to
work
in
the
real
and
approximate
world
where
rhetoric
was
the
appropriate
means
of
approaching
an
only
relative
truth.
The
way
I
have
put
this
point
of
view
deliberately
blurs
a
fine
but
important
distinction
between
two
kinds
of
probabilism:
that
of
rhetoric,
in
which
the
technical
means
of

72. plausible
reasoning
are
used
to
enhance
in
the
mind
of
the
listener
the
subjective
probability
that
the
speaker’s
thesis
is
true;
and
that
of
modern
skeptical
science,
which
uses
the
most
exact
and
rigorous
methods
possible
to
measure
the
probability
of
a
thesis—
that
is,
the
amount
of
confidence
we
can
have
that
it
is
a
good
approximation
to
a
reality
that
can
be
approached
only
asymptotically.
For
the
former,
proof
is
the
establishment
of
belief;
for
the
latter,
verification
is
the
rejection
of
a
surely
false
null
hypothesis
and
the
temporary
acceptance
of
an
alternative
as
the
best
one
available
at
the
moment.
I
do
not
believe
that
Freud
saw
this
distinction
clearly;
at
any
rate,
he
did
not
write
as
if
he
thought
in
these
terms.
Surely
he
was
a
superb
rhetorician,
whether
he
was
a
conscious
one
or
not.
He
was
a
master
of
all
its
five
parts,
of
which
we
have
discussed
so
far
primarily
aspects
of
the
first,
invention,
which
includes
the
modes
of
proof:
direct
evidence,
argumentation
from
the
evidence,
and
indirect
means
of
persuasion
by
the
force
of
personal
impression
or
presence
(ethos)
or
by
“the
emotion
he
is
able
to
awaken
by
his
verbal
appeals,
his
gestures,”
etc.
(pathos)
(Kennedy,
1963,
p.
10).
Freud’s
excellence
at
ethos
and
pathos,
and
at
the
last
two
of
the
parts,
memory
and
delivery,
is
described
by
Jones:
He
was
a
fascinating
lecturer.
The
lectures
were
always
enlightened
by
his
peculiar
ironic
humor
.
.
.
He
always
used
a
low
voice,
perhaps
because
it
could
become
rather
harsh
if
strained,
but
spoke
with
the
utmost
distinctness.
He
never
used
any
notes,
and
seldom
made
much
preparation
for
a
lecture
.
.
.
The
adoring
biographer
goes
on
to
state
that
“He
never
used
oratory,”
but
he
seems
to
be
using
the
term
in
the
modern
sense
as
synonymous
with
bombast,
which
was
surely
not
what
the
ancient
Greeks
meant.
What
Jones’s
description
conveys
is
a
very
effective
kind
of

73. personal
presence.
Freud
talked
intimately
and
conversationally
.
.
.
One
felt
he
was
addressing
himself
to
us
personally
.
.
.
There
was
no
flicker
of
condescension
in
it,
not
even
a
hint
of
a
teacher.
The
audience
was
assumed
to
consist
of
highly
intelligent
people
to
whom
he
wished
to
communicate
some
of
his
recent
experiences
.
.
.(Jones,
1953,
p.
341f.)
With
respect
to
the
remaining
two
parts
in
the
Aristotelian
five-­‐part
division
of
rhetoric,
arrangement
and
style,
much
could
be
written,
but
it
would
trench
on
literary
criticism.
The
Greeks
analyzed
style
evaluatively
in
terms
of
the
four
virtues
of
correctness,
clarity,
ornamentation,
and
propriety;
I
will
merely
record
my
impression
that
Freud
would
earn
top
grades
on
all
of
these
counts.
Freud
prided
himself
on
having
held
aloof
from
the
brawling
controversy
of
polemics.
Only
once,
he
says
with
some
pride
in
his
Autobiography
(1925),
did
he
directly
answer
a
critic,
in
1894.
Yet
it
is
obvious
that
he
wrote
in
a
polemical
mood
much
of
the
rest
of
his
life,
always
with
a
consciousness
that
the
reader
might
be
hostile.
He
was
explicit
about
it
in
many
letters
to
his
followers.
For
example,
to
Jung
in
1909:
We
cannot
avoid
the
resistances,
so
why
not
rather
challenge
them
at
once?
In
my
opinion
attack
is
the
best
defense.
Perhaps
you
underestimate
the
intensity
of
these
resistances
when
you
hope
to
counter
them
with
small
concessions.
(Quoted
in
Jones,
1955,
p.
436)
And
to
Pfister
two
years
later:
It
is
scarcely
possible
to
have
a
public
debate
on
psychoanalysis;
one
has
no
common
ground
and
there
is
nothing
to
be
done
against
the
lurking
emotions.
The
movement
is
concerned
with
the
depths,
and
debates
about
it
must
remain
as
unsuccessful
as
the
theological
disputations
at
the
time
of
the
Reformation.
(Jones,
1955,
p.
450f.)

74. Feeling
this
strongly,
Freud
could
not
have
done
other
than
to
approach
the
task
of
exposition
as
one
of
argument.
The
amazing
thing
is
that
the
skilled
verbal
swordsman
let
the
scientist
in
Freud
have
the
floor
as
much
as
he
did.7
SUMMARY
And
now
let
me
return
to
cognitive
style
in
its
contemporary
technical
sense.
As
Klein
uses
it,
a
cognitive
style
characterizes
a
person
and
his
unique
way
of
processing
information.
There
are,
of
course,
similarities
among
people
in
these
respects,
and
the
dimensions
into
which
cognitive
styles
may
be
analyzed
are
called
cognitive
control
principles.
(The
most
nearly
definitive
statement
of
the
principles
discovered
by
Klein
and
his
collaborators
is
contained
in
the
monograph
by
Gardner,
Holzman,
Klein,
Linton,
&
Spence,
1959.)
We
have
seen
that
Freud
had,
to
an
unusual
degree,
a
tolerance
for
ambiguity
and
inconsistency.
He
needed
it.
As
I
argued
in
earlier
sections,
above,
his
thinking
always
took
place
in
the
context
of
pervasive
conflicts.
In
the
first
of
these,
tender-­‐minded,
speculative,
wide-­‐ranging
and
fantasylike
thinking
deriving
from
Naturphilosophie
was
pitted
against
the
disciplined
physicalistic
physiology
of
his
revered
teachers.
The
second
conflict
involved
sets
of
propositions
about
reality
and
human
beings
and,
more
generally,
two
opposing
world
views,
a
humanistic
and
a
mechanistic
image
of
man—one
artistic,
literary,
and
philosophical,
the
other
grounded
in
a
reductionistic
ideal
of
Science
and
its
promise
of
progress
through
objectivity
and
rigor.
Moreover,
Freud’s
metapsychological
model
clashes
7
As
a
brief
ecological
aside,
I
would
like
to
suggest
that
Freud
might
have
been
less
of
a
fighter
in
his
writing
if
he
had
worked
from
the
protective
security
of
an
academic
position.
His
precious
Professorship
did
not
carry
tenure
nor
a
salary;
Freud
operated
always
from
the
exposed
and
lonely
situation
of
private
practice.

75. at
many
crucial
points
with
reality;
so
a
further
conflict
took
place
between
one
set
of
Freud’s
basic
orienting
assumptions
and
his
growing
knowledge
of
the
facts
about
behavior.
Because
of
all
these
conflicts,
I
believe
that
he
had
to
operate
in
his
characteristically
loose-­‐jointed
way.
If
he
had
had
a
compulsive
need
for
clarity
and
consistency,
he
would
probably
have
had
to
make
choices
and
resolve
his
intellectual
conflicts.
If
he
had
followed
the
way
of
hard-­‐nosed
science,
he
would
have
been
the
prisoner
of
the
methods
and
assumptions
he
learned
in
his
medical
school
and
its
laboratories—another,
more
gifted
Exner,
who
might
have
written
a
series
of
excellent
neurological
books
like
the
one
on
aphasia,
but
who
would
probably
have
emulated
his
cautious
contemporaries
in
steering
clear
of
hysterical
patients.
And
if
he
had
turned
his
back
on
the
effort
at
scientific
discipline
and
had
opened
the
floodgates
to
his
speculative
inventiveness,
we
might
have
had
a
spate
of
Nature-­‐philosophical
essays
but
nothing
like
psychoanalysis;
or
if
the
humanist
in
him
had
decisively
won
over
the
mechanist,
he
might
have
written
brilliant
novels
but
would
never
have
made
his
great
discoveries.
But
because
Freud
was
able
to
keep
one
foot
in
art
and
one
in
science,
because
he
could
comfortably
retain
the
security
of
a
model
inherited
from
respected
authorities
without
its
wholly
blinding
him
to
the
aspects
of
reality
for
which
it
had
no
place,
he
was
able
to
be
extraordinarily
creative.
Productive
originality
in
science
involves
a
dialectic
of
freedom
and
control,
flexibility
and
rigor,
speculation
and
self-­‐critical
checking.
Without
some
loosening
of
the
chains
of
conventional,
safe,
secondary-­‐process
thinking,
there
can
be
little
originality;
Pegasus
must
have
a
chance
to
take
wing.
But
liberation
alone
is
not
enough.
If

76. flexibility
is
not
accompanied
by
discipline,
it
becomes
fluidity,
and
then
we
have
a
visionary,
a
Phantast
(as
Freud
once
called
himself
and
Fliess)
instead
of
a
scientist.
It
was
just
this
that
Freud
feared
in
himself.
The
daring
but
fruitful
ideas
must
be
sorted
from
the
merely
daring
or
positively
harebrained
ones;
insights
must
be
painstakingly
checked;
new
concepts
must
be
worked
into
a
structure
of
laws
so
that
they
fit
smoothly,
buttress
and
extend
the
edifice.
All
of
this
takes
an
attitude
that
is
antithetical
to
the
earlier,
more
strictly
creative
one.
It
is
asking
a
great
deal
of
a
man,
therefore,
that
he
be
adept
in
both
types
of
thinking
and
able
to
shift
appropriately
from
the
role
of
dreamer
to
that
of
critic.
Perhaps
that
is
one
reason
that
we
have
so
few
truly
great
scientists.
This
first
major
characteristic
of
Freud’s
cognitive
style
is
strikingly
reminiscent
of
the
principle
of
cognitive
control
called
by
Klein
and
his
associates
tolerance
for
instability
or
for
unrealistic
experiences.
“‘Tolerant’
subjects
[as
compared
to
intolerant
ones]
seemed
in
equally
adequate
contact
with
external
reality,
but
were
much
more
relaxed
in
their
acceptance
of
both
ideas
and
perceptual
organizations
that
required
deviation
from
the
conventional’’
(Gardner
et
al.,
1959,
p.
93).
It
is
a
relaxed
and
imaginative
kind
of
mind,
opposed
to
the
kind
that
rigidly
clings
to
a
literally
interpreted
reality.
And
Freud
(1933)
was
unusually
willing
to
entertain
parapsychological
hypotheses
that
go
well
beyond
scientifically
conventional
concepts
of
reality.
Telepathy
is
quite
literally
an
“unrealistic
experience.”
If
Freud
was
tolerant
of
ambiguity,
inconsistency,
instability,
and
unrealistic
experiences,
there
was
one
similar-­‐sounding
state
that
he
could
not
tolerate:
meaninglessness,
the
assumption
that
a
process
was
stochastic
or
that
a
phenomenon

77. occurred
because
of
random
error.
No
doubt
this
attitude
led
him
at
times
into
overinterpreting
data
and
reading
meaning—especially
dynamic
or
motivational
meaning—into
behavior
unwarrantedly.
But
it
also
spurred
his
basic
discoveries,
such
as
that
of
the
primary
process
and
the
interpretability
of
dreams,
neurotic
and
psychotic
symptoms.
Let
us
see
whether
the
remaining
five
dimensions
described
by
Gardner,
Holzman,
Klein,
Linton,
and
Spence
do
not
form
a
useful
framework
for
summarizing
Freud’s
manner
of
thinking.
It
surely
seems
probable
that
Freud
was
strongly
field-­‐independent.
Inner-­‐
directed
he
surely
was,
and
Graham
(1955)
has
shown
an
empirical
connection
between
Riesman’s
(1950)
and
Witkin's
(1949)
concepts.
Here
is
the
Gardner
et
al.
description
of
the
kind
of
person
who
is
field-­‐independent—not
markedly
dependent
on
the
visual
field
for
orientation
to
the
upright:
he
is
characterized
by
“(a)
activity
in
dealing
with
the
environment;
(b)
.
.
.‘inner
life’
and
effective
control
of
impulses,
with
low
anxiety;
and
(c)
high
self-­‐esteem,
including
confidence
in
the
body
and
a
relatively
adult
body-­‐image.
”
It
sounds
a
good
deal
like
Freud,
except
possibly
for
his
ambivalent
and
rather
hypochondriacal
attitude
towards
his
body—“poor
Konrad,”
as
he
wryly
called
it.
Linton
(1955)
has
further
shown
that
field-­‐independent
people
are
little
susceptible
to
group
influence,
surely
true
of
Freud.
In
his
preference
for
a
small
number
of
extremely
broadly
defined
motivational
concepts,
Freud
seems
to
have
had
a
broad
equivalence
range.
And
on
Klein’s
dimension
of
flexible
versus
constricted
control,
Freud
would
assuredly
have
scored
well
over
at
the
flexible
end.
Was
he
not
“relatively
comfortable
in
situations
that
involved
contradictory
or

78. intrusive
cues
.
.
.
not
overimpressed
with
a
dominant
stimulus
organization
if
.
.
.
another
part
of
the
field
[was]
more
appropriate”?
And
surely
he
“did
not
tend
to
suppress
feeling
and
other
internal
cues.”
This
is
the
description
of
the
flexibly-­‐controlled
subject
(Gardner
et
al.,
1959,
p.
53f.).
The
other
two
dimensions
of
cognitive
control
seem
less
relevant.
Scanning
(as
against
focusing)
as
a
way
of
using
attention
might
seem
to
suggest
the
way
Freud
attended
to
his
patients,
but
it
is
qualitatively
different.
Scanning
is
accompanied
by
the
ability
to
concentrate
on
what
is
important,
but
at
the
cost
of
isolation
of
affect
and
overintellectualization;
it
is
not
so
much
passively
relaxed
attending
as
a
restlessly
roaming
search
for
everything
that
might
be
useful.
And
so
far
as
I
can
determine,
Freud
was
not
either
a
leveler
or
a
sharpener;
he
neither
habitually
blurred
distinctions
and
oversimplified
nor
was
he
specially
alert
to
fine
differences
and
always
on
the
lookout
for
slight
changes
in
situations.
It
is
fair
to
conclude,
I
think,
that
some
of
these
principles
of
cognitive
control
seem
quite
apt
and
useful,
though
a
good
deal
of
the
flavor
of
Freud’s
uniqueness
as
a
thinker
is
lost
when
we
apply
them
to
him.
In
addition,
a
couple
of
other
aspects
of
cognitive
style
have
been
suggested
as
characterizing
Freud.
Kaplan
(1964)
begins
a
general
discussion
of
the
cognitive
style
of
behavioral
scientists
thus:
“.
.
.thought
and
its
expression
are
surely
not
wholly
unrelated
to
one
another,
and
how
scientific
findings
are
formulated
for
incorporation
into
the
body
of
knowledge
often
reflects
stylistic
traits
of
the
thinking
behind
them"
(p.
259).
He
goes
on
to
describe
six
principal
styles,
and
mentions
Freud
in
connection
with
the
first
two
of
them:
the
literary
and
the
academic
styles.
The
literary

79. style
is
often
concerned
with
individuals,
interpreted
“largely
in
terms
of
the
specific
purposes
and
perspectives
of
the
actors,
rather
than
in
terms
of
the
abstract
and
general
categories
of
the
scientist’s
own
explanatory
scheme
.
.
.
Freud’s
studies
of
Moses
and
Leonardo
.
.
.
exhibit
something
of
this
style.’’
The
academic
style,
by
contrast,
is
“much
more
abstract
and
general
.
.
.
There
is
some
attempt
to
be
precise,
but
it
is
verbal
rather
than
operational.
Ordinary
words
are
used
in
special
senses,
to
constitute
a
technical
vocabulary.
.
.
.
[Treatment
of
the
data]
tends
to
be
highly
theoretical,
if
not,
indeed,
purely
speculative.
System
is
introduced
by
way
of
great
‘principles,’
applied
over
and
over
to
specific
cases,
which
illustrate
the
generalization
rather
than
serve
as
proofs
for
it.’’
Kaplan
cites
“essays
in
psychoanalytic
theory’’
generally
as
examples,
but
I
trust
it
will
be
apparent
how
well
these
descriptions
characterize
and
summarize
much
of
what
I
have
brought
out
about
Freud.

80. A
Decalogue
for
the
Reader
of
Freud
To
conclude,
let
me
come
back
to
my
original
statement
that
a
better
understanding
of
Freud’s
intellectual
background
and
cognitive
style
would
help
the
contemporary
reader
to
read
him
with
insight
rather
than
confusion,
and
try
to
give
it
substance
in
the
form
of
ten
admonitions.
Like
another
decalogue,
they
can
be
reduced
to
one
golden
rule:
be
empathic
rather
than
projective—learn
what
are
the
man’s
own
terms
and
take
him
on
them.
1. Beware
of
lifting
statements
out
of
context.
This
practice
is
particularly
tempting
to
textbook
writers,
polemical
critics,
and
research-­‐minded
clinical
psychologists
who
are
more
eager
to
get
right
to
the
testing
of
propositions
than
to
undertake
the
slow
study
of
a
large
corpus
of
theory.
There
is
no
substitute
for
reading
enough
of
Freud
to
get
his
full
meaning,
which
is
almost
never
fully
expressed
in
a
single
paragraph
on
no
matter
how
specific
a
point.
2. Don’t
take
Freud’s
extreme
formulations
literally.
Treat
them
as
his
way
of
calling
your
attention
to
a
point.
When
he
says
“never,”
“invariably,”
“conclusively,”
and
the
like,
read
on
for
the
qualifying
and
softening
statements.
Remember
the
change
that
has
taken
place
in
the
general
atmosphere
since
Freud
wrote
his
major
works;
social
acceptance
and
respectability
have
replaced
shock
and
hostility,
which
made
Freud
feel
that
his
was
a
small
and
lonely
voice
in
a
cold
wilderness,
so
that
he
had
to
shout
in
order
to
be
heard
at
all.
3. Look
out
for
inconsistencies;
don’t
either
trip
over
them
or
seize
on
them
with

81. malicious
glee,
but
take
them
as
incomplete
dialectic
formulations
awaiting
the
synthesis
that
Freud’s
cognitive
style
made
him
consistently
draw
back
from.
4. Be
on
the
watch
for
figurative
language,
personification
in
particular
(reified
formulations
of
concepts
as
homunculi).
Remember
that
it
is
there
primarily
for
color
even
though
it
did
at
times
lead
Freud
astray
himself,
and
that
it
is
fairest
to
him
to
rely
primarily
on
those
of
his
statements
of
issues
that
are
least
poetic
and
dramatic.
5. Don’t
expect
rigorous
definitions;
look
rather
for
the
meanings
of
his
terms
in
the
ways
they
are
used
over
a
period
of
time.
And
don’t
be
dismayed
if
you
find
a
word
being
used
at
one
place
in
its
ordinary,
literary
meaning,
at
another
in
a
special
technical
sense
which
changes
with
the
developmental
status
of
the
theory.
An
enterprise
like
the
Dictionary
of
Psychoanalysis,
put
together
by
a
couple
of
industrious
but
misguided
analysts
who
lifted
definition-­‐like
sentences
from
many
of
Freud’s
works,
is
completely
mistaken
in
conception
and
betrays
a
total
misunderstanding
of
Freud’s
style
of
thinking
and
working.
6. Be
benignly
skeptical
about
Freud’s
assertions
of
proof
that
something
has
been
established
beyond
doubt.
Remember
that
he
had
different
standards
of
proof
than
we
do
today,
that
he
rejected
experiment
partly
from
a
too-­‐narrow
conception
of
it
and
partly
because
he
had
found
it
stylistically
incompatible
long
before
even
the
first
works
of
R.
A.
Fisher,
and
tended
to
confuse
a
replicated
observation
with
a
verified
theory
of
the
phenomenon
in
question.
7. Remember
that
Freud
was
overfond
of
dichotomies,
even
when
his
data
were
better
conceptualized
as
continuous
variables;
in
general,
don’t
assume
that
the
theory
is
invalidated
by
its
being
stated
much
of
the
time
in
methodologically
indefensible
form.

82. 8. Be
wary
of
Freud’s
persuasiveness.
Keep
in
mind
that
he
was
a
powerful
rhetorician
in
areas
where
his
scientific
footing
was
uncertain.
Though
he
was
often
right,
it
was
not
always
for
the
reasons
he
gave,
which
are
almost
never
truly
sufficient
to
prove
his
case,
and
not
always
to
the
extent
that
he
hoped.
Finally,
be
particularly
cautious
not
to
gravitate
toward
either
of
two
extreme
and
equally
untenable
positions:
that
is,
9. Don’t
take
Freud’s
every
sentence
as
a
profound
truth
which
may
present
difficulties
but
only
because
of
our
own
inadequacies,
our
pedestrian
difficulty
in
keeping
up
with
the
soaring
mind
of
a
genius
who
did
not
always
bother
to
explicate
steps
that
were
obvious
to
him,
but
which
we
must
supply
by
laborious
exegetical
scholarship.
This
is
the
temptation
of
the
scholars
working
from
within
the
psychoanalytic
institutes,
those
earnest
Freudians
who,
to
Freud’s
annoyance,
had
already
begun
to
emerge
during
his
lifetime.
For
most
of
us
in
the
universities,
the
corresponding
temptation
is
the
more
dangerous
one:
10. Don’t
let
yourself
get
so
offended
by
Freud’s
lapses
from
methodological
purity
that
you
dismiss
him
altogether.
Almost
any
reader
can
learn
an
enormous
lot
from
Freud
if
he
will
listen
carefully
and
sympathetically
and
not
take
his
pronouncements
too
seriously.

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